Microsoft is redesigning the Windows BSoD - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: MrMobodies
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2025, 04:09:24 am
content: https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/01/microsoft_is_redesigning_the_windows/QuoteBuzzword bullshit:" a new, more streamlined UI", "more streamlined", "better aligns", "Windows 11 designed principles", productivity, "your experience".*" the notification that Windows presents after it crashes so badly a reboot is the only way out."It already does this by default:**"While preserving the technical information..." and I hope they keep to that and maybe they should go back to putting some more technical detail without oversimplifying it and dumbing it down even further that might be useful to help identify other causes.What do you think?

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2025, 04:20:58 am
content: First of all, let me ask you: when's the last time you saw a BSOD (no matter what the color) on your Windoze computah?Have you ever? that is, recently?I've been using my Windows 7 system for a couple of years now. I have had some problems with it; couple times it's gone kind of catatonic, needed to be restarted, but then came up with "Resuming Windows" rather than rebooting, leaving me exactly where I left off.I have gottenzeroBSODs. None.Don't get me wrong; I'm no fan of Micro$oft. But the more recent OSs are so much more reliable than the old ones that it's not even an issue anymore for me.

author: MrMobodies
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2025, 04:32:13 am
content: Good point. For me about a month ago. I was trying to install a driver for an FTDI usb to serial. last week I unplugged an ssd enclosure (Realtek) by accident without unmounting it first and it caused it to stall and do that.If it can resume where you left off that'd be good as long as it doesn't keep on restarting too much if the fault is re occurring ah by which time it might start the recovery environment.I just hope they do as they say preserve whatever technical detail is left when seen happening before it auto restarts or resumes or maybe they will show more stuff on the notifications widget beside the clock.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2025, 05:18:42 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on April 04, 2025, 04:20:58 amVery infrequent, like two-three times a year but a clean-build of a Qt project would trigger a BSOD due to watchdog timeout or illegal opcode on my work laptop.The laptop i had before was really sensitive about pressure points near the upper right corner, would either trigger a BSOD or outright screen failure until reboot.Also borked drivers windows update insisted to install even when prohibited

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2025, 05:24:26 am
content: Quote from: JPortici on April 04, 2025, 05:18:42 amIllegal opcode? Really?That happens to meall the time(I program Win32 in assembly language), and I never get anything other than the standard "XXXX.exe has stopped working" dialog. Never.Maybe I'm just lucky? (Don't think so.) I do it for fun. Ackshooly, it's more often an illegal memory access (trying to dereference a null pointer, naturally).

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2025, 09:36:30 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on April 04, 2025, 05:24:26 amYears ago I used to get all sorts of kernel panics on mac when i was compiling software from sourcesback when homebrew was at the beginning and war pretty much unusable so you would end up compiling from source anywayMaybe it's just me

author: nali
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2025, 10:00:34 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on April 04, 2025, 04:20:58 amLast year: Intermittent DIMM failureA few weeks ago: Using a cheap Arduino clone with a CH340 UART for a little side project for someone. The latest driver BSODs my Win11 which took a bit of frigging about with Device Manager and Regedit to disable updates.

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2025, 12:52:14 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on April 04, 2025, 04:20:58 amSame story here. I've thrashed my various Windows PCs mercilessly for years, and in truth I cannot remember the last time I got a BSOD. Certainly it's at least 10 years ago and probably very much more. In that time I've had MacOS crash (once, I think) and a handful of Linux crashes.It is important to point out that the BSOD is not really a crash, and I don't think we should look at it in a pejorative way. It is a by-design behaviour and very important. When the OS detects an illegal operation in kernel mode it immediately stops all normal processing in order to protect your user data from corruption. Kernel mode does not provide the inter-process protection that user mode does, which is why the risk to your data is potentially much higher.Very, very occasionally the bug is in Windows' own kernel mode code, but this is exceptionally rare these days. By far the most common cause is a bug in a third party kernel mode driver. And freezing all processing when that happens is an excellent idea. When you see the BSOD you should arguably be pleased and thankful that Windows has just saved you from potential data loss or corruption due to some third party's crap code.You might argue (and so might I) that Windows shouldn't run any third party drivers in kernel mode, thus protecting the OS from an obvious source of bugs. However, Windows is not alone: Linux also uses kernel mode drivers from third parties. I don't know about MacOS, but I expect so. The designers of Windows and Linux realised that the overhead of all the context switches required to keep drivers exclusively in user mode was just too high. Hence the testing regime that drivers must endure before Microsoft allows them onto their update servers. Even then it seems a few bugs creep through.So, a BSOD is not a "crash" or an indication of how crap Windows is, despite what all the anti-MS members of this forum like to think. Rather it is the OS taking steps to protect itself and your data from corruption due to bad kernel mode code, most of which is third party drivers.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2025, 12:57:17 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on April 04, 2025, 04:20:58 amI used to get it from time to time on my work laptop using the buggy "hybrid" mode where the AMD GPU and nVidia GPU would switch places occasionally (I think the idea was the nVidia GPU could spool down for light loads? IDK.) I also got them from time to time on my old PC, but the cause was a defective GPU, likely VRAM fault, so not something I can really blame Microsoft for.I think it's fair to say unless you've got buggy firmware or hardware, or some really odd configuration, modern Windows is indeed pretty stable, probably at least as stable as Linux is on the same hardware (& assuming there are no bugs with the Linux system wrt to that hardware...)

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2025, 03:55:25 pm
content: I'm sure that's dev time very well invested...

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2025, 07:46:51 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on April 04, 2025, 03:55:25 pmTo what are you referring here?

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 06, 2025, 01:46:19 am
content: Way better than the current "ASCII frowny face". I find Microsoft has really dumbed down the language in Windows, you get ridicilous messages like "Oops, something went wrong..." yeah, real helpful.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2025, 01:54:18 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on April 06, 2025, 01:46:19 amHmm, I dunno.I'm a programmer (hobbyist, but still), but I appreciate the effort to demystify things for the "normies".So why not couch their phraseology in terms that the average person can understand, without requiring further knowledge of how things actually work inside one's computah?I don't see it so much a being "dumbed down" as being made comprehensible to the majority of their user audience.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 06, 2025, 03:20:44 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on April 06, 2025, 01:54:18 amI tend to disagree. "Technical" screens like crashes are most likely to be consumed by a technical audience. For the average user, I doubt they care. They are more concerned that they just lost that document they were working on.Same as installing Windows... the average user will probably never re-install Windows in their life. Why have stupid screens like "We're working on it..." etc... That gives no information as to the progress or what the machine is up to, no ETA, nothing. It's just a matter of watching the silly animation and hoping its done soon.I've noticed this dumbing down of language in other places as well. For example on Sydney trains, the station announcements used to say "This train terminates here... Please do not board this train". Now it just says "Do not get on this train". I believe we should be encouraging people to learn and made better use of language. Or at least include the option of a "dumb mode" for those that want it.

author: mwb1100
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2025, 05:20:32 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on April 04, 2025, 05:24:26 amBSOD only occurs when the error is in kernel mode code or one of several "critical" programs such as csrss.exe. For regular user mode crashes there's no need to BSOD because the kernel can throw away the program that crashed. To throw away the kernel requires... a reboot.Windows BSODs became much less frequent because about 20 years ago Microsoft started requiring 3rd party (and I suppose internal) driver code to be signed and to pass rigorous driver verification testing in order to get signed. Before then anybody could ship whatever code they wanted in a device driver without so much as a "how ya doin'?".MS also moved a lot of functionality that used to require kernel mode drivers (like printers and a lot of what graphics devices needed) out of kernel mode code into user mode code to keep more and more 3rd party code outside of the kernel.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2025, 12:40:50 pm
content: I can generate a BSOD at will any time on my dual monitor Win 7 workhorse computer that has an NVIDIA graphics card. If I leave applications windows on both monitors without minimizing them into the system tray before I put the computer into Hibernation, on waking up from Hibernation the computer throws BSOD.Yes i am running the latest motherboard BIOS and NVIDIA driver, that did not fix the issue.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2025, 01:27:41 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on April 04, 2025, 07:46:51 pmProbably to the OP.Regarding illegal opcodes, there is no way it can crash the OS in a user app, but it can if it is in the kernel itself or something running at the same level, like in a driver.While I highly doubt it can happen in the kernel (the Windows kernel is not that bad), it's very likely in some third-party driver. And while again MS has flaws, it's unlikely to end up in a WHQL driver either, so probably a driver that has no WHQL certification - possibly a driver that was compiled with optimizations enabled for some very recent CPU generation, something to obviously avoid, but shit happens. Or a driver that has some buffer overflows and corrupts the stack.Could otherwise just be a hardware issue too, if the CPU overheats or is undervolted or something, but if the computer otherwise seems to work fine, it's less likely.

author: 5U4GB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2025, 06:06:41 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on April 06, 2025, 01:54:18 amIn this case they've managed to come up with an error message that's utterly useless for both nontechnical and technical people. For nontechnical people it's useless because when something's gone wrong you don't need a message telling you it's gone wrong, you can tell from the fact that it's gone wrong. For technical people it's just as useless because it gives you zero information on what the problem is. It's straight from the Ken Thompson's Car school of design:QuoteSince the term enshittification is already in use, I propose "cretinisation" for this type of software design.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2025, 10:11:39 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on April 06, 2025, 03:20:44 amIt is possible for the message to cater for everyone:Windows has crashedTechnical details:The ordinary user would then know in plain terms and the tech will have debugging information.

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2025, 10:35:18 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on April 07, 2025, 10:11:39 amExcept it hasn't crashed. It has halted - a by-design behaviour to protect against user data loss or corruption. A real crash would look more like a lock-up where the computer appears frozen, or possibly some rubbish flashing on the screen, or some other random or unwanted behaviour.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2025, 11:11:16 am
content: Quote from: SteveThackery on April 07, 2025, 10:35:18 amSemantics. As far as the user is concerned it has crashed i.e. become unresponsive.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2025, 11:18:51 am
content: Quote from: SteveThackery on April 07, 2025, 10:35:18 amIt certainly would cause user data loss. No BSoD permits applications to safely save their state and terminate before restarting the kernel. It is always "instant kernel halt". This is why almost every software product that works on a lot of data has an autosave function, though these are not perfect.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2025, 11:24:46 am
content: According to Wikipedia, a stop screen such as a BSOD is a crash. Yes, I know Wikipedia isn't always right, but this does appear to be the current definition of the word, even if it used to mean something else.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(computing)

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2025, 01:56:38 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on April 07, 2025, 11:18:51 amI'm sorry for not being clear: I meant data loss in the sense of corruption. I agree that unsaved data will be lost. There's no reliable way of letting the user 'File, Save" after a BSOD.I think that autosave is primarily there to protect against failure to manually save before closing, and also against crashes of the app itself. Nevertheless, it is useful against BSODs.

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2025, 02:11:59 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on April 07, 2025, 11:24:46 amWho am I to disagree with Wikipedia?To me there are two distinct behaviours. The BSOD is designed in. In other words, Windows is programmed to halt under certain circumstances, store some diagnostics data, and execute a restart. It's a form of error handling, and everything that happens has been programmed in.On the other hand, I think a crash is when the processor runs away, out of control. Typically it might execute data, or it might NOP its way through empty memory, or it might get stuck in a loop, or it might corrupt its own executable code. In other words, it is NOT behaving as the programmer intended.I think these are quite distinct: 1/ "as designed" or 2/ "out of control", which is why I think the BSOD (and whatever the Linux and MacOS equivalents are) does not count as a crash, whereas the "out of control" mode certainly does.Anyway, that's just what I think! I defer to the majority.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 08, 2025, 07:02:46 am
content: Quote from: SteveThackery on April 07, 2025, 01:56:38 pmI know what you meant: the operating system halted the machine to prevent it from doing more damage, i.e. overwriting more data.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 08, 2025, 07:33:13 am
content: Quote from: SteveThackery on April 07, 2025, 10:35:18 amAnd then there are negative connotations that come with this kind of language from a marketing perspective. No one wants Windows to always be "crashing".

author: Infraviolet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 08, 2025, 04:03:46 pm
content: "modern Windows is indeed pretty stable, probably at least as stable as Linux is on the same hardware"Stable, really, an operating system which forces updates on you when you don't want them? Linux might not always run perfectly, but atleast when it does work then it will only later stop working if you make the active choice to install a particular update (or you do something silly in the terminal).

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 08, 2025, 04:17:32 pm
content: Quote from: Infraviolet on April 08, 2025, 04:03:46 pmWhat have forced updates got to do with it? Yes, they might well be inconvenient, but they have nothing to do with the subject of this discussion.Back on topic: for the past small number of years my Linux installations have been less stable than my Windows machines, but my lack of expertise in Linux might be part of that. Although really ineptitude shouldn't be accepted as a cause of kernel halts.

author: 5U4GB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2025, 08:34:44 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on April 08, 2025, 07:33:13 amOK, we'll just have to say "Windows has experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly".Seriously though, this is an actual problem, Microsoft oldtimers likeRaymond Chenhave covered this a number of times, most crashes aren't due to Windows but third-party drivers, mostly graphics drivers, so saying "Windows crashed" is blaming the wrong party.

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2025, 01:31:24 pm
content: Quote from: 5U4GB on April 09, 2025, 08:34:44 amAnd, as I say, it isn't a crash, it's a controlled kernel halt and restart.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2025, 07:27:08 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on April 08, 2025, 07:33:13 amThe current patronising messages have negative connotations. It only serves to frustrate the user. It wouldn't be hard to display a message stating which driver has resulted in the error. It doesn't have to be overly technical either.

author: metertech58761
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2025, 07:48:29 pm
content: Funny thing is, on macOS, it shows non-Mac devices it sees on the network as a monitor displaying the classic Win98-era BSOD. Will they have to change that as well?

author: 5U4GB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2025, 05:17:52 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on April 09, 2025, 07:27:08 pmRaymond Chen (see my previous post) has covered this as well, it's often not the driver itself that crashes but the driver causing problems for other drivers that then crash. In particular publicly stating it was Driver X when the actual cause was the memory corruption created by Driver Y that made X crash is inviting a lawsuit.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2025, 06:17:55 am
content: Quote from: metertech58761 on April 09, 2025, 07:48:29 pmThat's exactly the kind of smug snark I'd expect from Apple (particularly Apple tech-bois and gurls).

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 10, 2025, 07:22:11 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on April 10, 2025, 06:17:55 amCheeky. I love it.

author: steve30
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2025, 09:58:43 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on April 06, 2025, 01:46:19 amWhen you were in the police force did you ever end up arresting a Windows 98 machine for performing illegal operations?

author: Kean
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 10, 2025, 10:22:43 am
content: Quote from: metertech58761 on April 09, 2025, 07:48:29 pmHaha, so it does. I've never noticed that before, and as someone who uses a mix of Windows, MacOS, and Linux environments daily it is actually kind of hilarious.Attached is what you see if you are looking at a PC in Finder under network in gallery view. It isn't obvious when the icon is smaller.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 11, 2025, 02:52:18 am
content: Quote from: steve30 on April 10, 2025, 09:58:43 amI'm notthatold Steve!Speaking of Windows crashes, remember the days of Norton CrashGuard etc... I think Quarterdeck made a similar product? They often caught the crash but then ended up making everything else more unstable as a result.

author: Hogwild
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2025, 03:28:24 am
content: Microsoft seems to have a strong urge to change anything that doesn't need changing, and ignore what does. I'm considering abandoning the platform after decades of being loyal.The privacy situation and MS update quagmire are pushing me hard in that direction.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 15, 2025, 03:59:50 am
content: Quote from: Hogwild on April 15, 2025, 03:28:24 amI faced this exact problem when Windows 7 went EOL. I've never used Windows 8 or later at home for anything other than testing in VM. It's utter garbage. Administering it in a corporate environment is even worse.I like Linux and used it for several years, but I need a machine that is reliable and ready to go when I need it to be, without silly issues or wondering if the machine will boot after a major update. With Apple's silicon, this just pushed me over the edge to adopt Mac OS as my daily driver and haven't looked back since. The combination of hardware and software is just perfect.However, don't make the mistake of iOS being as good as Mac OS. iOS (which runs on Apple's mobile devices) still has some progress to make. It's too restrictive. Android is far more advanced in many ways.

author: 5U4GB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2025, 08:44:55 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on April 15, 2025, 03:59:50 amIt didn't go EOL, it entered that happy state where it's safe from further Microsoft f-kery.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2025, 11:45:54 pm
content: Quote from: 5U4GB on April 15, 2025, 08:44:55 amAmen to that. (Last word spelt out by me. Don't be shy!)I use Windows 7--even paid $$ for a legit copy of it.I love it. Or at least I hate it less than any Windoze OS I've used. (I still miss XP.)

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2025, 11:49:23 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on April 04, 2025, 04:20:58 amyeah, it's super rare, usually bad ram, bad overclock or some hardware issue.Can't recall a software/driver issue causing me a BSDO in many many years. Definitely happened back with Win7 a few times and lots before that.

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 16, 2025, 07:36:29 pm
content: BSODs never offered much useful information.I started using Windows in the 90s and for years following I would swear I could use infomation from BSODs to fix the issue. In retrospection I say it was no more than a mixture of shotgun debugging, magical thinking, and cherry-picking successes. Most often the information was meaningless for practical purposes. Where it could be useful, the practice of barring access to information by software vendors was rendering it useless. The relatively rare positive outcomes? Correlating the crash with other information, though at the time I’d be convinced it wa due to what I saw in the BSOD. Misinterpreting the information, but by sheer luck it connecting me with the solution. The few instances, where it happened to match an error recently seen by other users.If you believe BSOD helps you, as I did back then, ask yourself: is it so or are you making the same mistakes I made.Now I see BSOD as nothing more than a way to tell the user “this is the end.” The design should follow the function. So just make it nice, avoid confusion, reduce pointless frustration. The actual technical details should nowadays go to logs and dumps. There they can be retrieved and give much, much richer information than any BSOD could offer. I suppose we all hate the meaningless “something went wrong” messages, followed with generic and useless hints. But observe this is only, because we miss any alternative way to access the details. Which is not the case, when they’re written into logs.Putting details in BSOD is also questionable from security standpoint. Anybody seeing the screen can access potentially sensitive information.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2025, 07:51:54 am
content: I haven't tried it, but it was possible to alter the colour of the BSOD on older versions of Windwoes, by altering the registry.If MS ware going to change the colour, then it should be brown, because it's a crappy thing to happen and it still begins with a letter B, preserving the BSOD initialism.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2025, 01:12:46 pm
content: Quote from: Hogwild on April 15, 2025, 03:28:24 amGood decision.Note that Google (well, "Alphabet") does the same thing. It's a constant now in large corporations making software.