Red Screen Of Death! Vista to abandon BSOD and go with RSOD

[HellFire121 0]

As far as i can see it is not entirely pointless, but it would be for the average user that can read. If a visualy impared person (or someone who can't read properly) gets one i guess it would be easier for them to notice if it is a serious error or just a small one.But what i would suggest for the average user is give a more detailed error message so they know exactly what happened, what went wrong and steps to fix it in plain english.Also i'd like to see an option to turn on advanced error messages for the more advanced users.-HellFire

[Kubi 0]

The day people can actually understand BSoD messages, is when apple takes over Microsoft. Couse, when that happens....there will be no BSoD. <3.Isn't this just pointing out that Windows Vista is ganna have a lot of errors?Bill Gates: Ok guys. I know Vista is ganna stink, so just to prepare, lets change the BSoD to a RED SCREEN OF DEATH! Because there are going to be a lot of errors! Ya!oh...I can't wait.

[Levis 0]

I think that Microsoft should redesign their BSoD so that regular users can actually read what the heck is wrong with the system instead of just pumping out the debug information!
Heck, even Linux's kernel panics can be easily read than Microsoft's BSoDs.

xboxrulz

Lol, but then most people would not know how to fix thier system. The debug info helps us techs figure out what the problem is. Hell if the BSOD scares me and im a tech, i can't wait to freak out when i get the red one.
It is possible to switch the BSOD in the windows registry in Safe Mode, you can also turn it off and have windows restart!

[Alegis 0]

Been using Vista for 2 years now, and ever since RC1 haven't gotten a single BSOD. And I did use it with a lot of pressure, various things going on.Really glad with Vista. OS I work the fastest and most efficient on by far. If I had a computer with lower resources than this high-end PC I'd most likely use Linux, but definitely not now.

[iGuest 3]

Well, even though I don't believe changing colors depending on the severity of errors would make a big difference for Microsoft or its product users, there might be some valid reasons behind it...

 

 

1) It could help the visually-impaired to a certain extent. I mean, aside from Total color Blindness (a.k.a. Visual Agnosia), there are two types of color blindness: Red-Green and Blue-Yellow. So people with either of these two types can differentiate between a *red* and a *blue* screen.

 

 

2) I haven't tested Vista yet so this might be totally wrong, but perhaps the BSoD is now reserved for serious warnings rather than mild errors. Or maybe the RSoD only appears when the Operating System is faced with something really detrimental that won't be solved by merely restarting the PC. Unfortunately, I don't have the time at the moment to check the validity of this assumption, but perhaps those of you who know more about Vista can shed some light on this? It'd be great

 

 

3) Perhaps, for some reason, Microsoft customers' feedback asked for this feature. I think it's rather unrealistic to assume that big enough a number of customers asked for such a feature/change to grant its actual implementation, but who knows!

 

 

4) Its another one of Microsoft utterly out-of-the-blue, useless changes that keep showing up every now and then. It could be just a publicity stunt of sorts. It could be a feeble attempt to promote Vista as having yet another new feature. Microsoft is well-known for its being a marketing company more than for anything else.

 

 

 

All in all, although I don't think this is something that will have actual impact on the user experience itself, I don't see a real problem with having it. After all, it *supposedly* won't come up unless a PC is really screwed. And since I very rarely encountered a BSoD using XP, I'll give Microsoft the benefit of doubt and assume that a RSoD is going to appear even more rarely in Vista

 

 

 

Cheers.

[FirefoxRocks 0]

Yes, the RSoD will scare the crap out of new computer users.

Red generally means strong negative. In computers, it could mean virus, fatal error, unrecoverable error or who knows?

 

It seems to be true that there is going to be a RSoD for Windows Vista. See Wikipedia Entry.

 

If you enjoy the Screens of Death, there is also the BSoD (common), RSoD (new), GSoD (for TiVo and XBox 360) and YSoD (XML parsing errors in Mozilla programs). Another one for Mac is the Sad Mac and Sad iPod icons.

 

Well, I prefer the RSoD better than the BSoD on Windows. It is more exciting and prompts you to phone for technical support (which I enjoy). What do you think?

[mirdux 0]

well its not like its there long enough for you to truly appreciate it... it usually appears then reboots your computer before you can understand what exactly is happening.....Its been that way and probably always will be maybe just have a camera rigged up that snaps a picture of the screen when it senses a profound amount of blue.... or red in this case

[Innila 0]

I think this is just another marketing strategy of Microsoft to show that there is a NEW feature introduced in Vista.The colour differentiation may be helpful in distinguishing between fatal error & recoverable error, other than that, nothing great about it.

[tansqrx 0]

A few comments on this one. I have been running XP since it came out and I have rarely seen a BSoD. Usually the computer just reboots without seeing anything.

Aka_Bar mentioned the following:

Yeah, you are quit rigth its imposble i think to see Blue Screen in XP in normal running, and casue may be that it turned offâŚ

I donât think you can turn it off. It is something built into the NT Kernel.

I also agree with xboxrulz that the error message should be more readable and be on the screen longer. At any rate you can still retrieve the last message by reading the memory dump which is usually located at %systemroot%\Minidump. Of course you may not have this turned on because you can change it under system properties>advanced>startup and recovery.

I have tried to diagnose many of these messages before and have almost never been able to use one. Turns out that 99% of the messages are generic and could mean that anything could be wrong. Like in medicine, thousands of different afflictions all have the same three symptoms. Wikipedia as usually has an excellent article on the subject at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_screen_of_death.

[sparkx 0]

I don't know any idea why Microsoft even has a red screen of death (RSOD) or blue screen of death (BSOD)? It sounds kinda like another useless program for them to sell? Do these "screens of death" appear when you get hacked or what? Is it the default background? I don't think its smart to use the color red since its been proven to cause people to become angry. I forget were I herd that from but its true. The color green makes people feel happy (after looking at my green poster) laugh out loudSparkx.

[wutske 0]

This would be THE combination for people who want their windowsXP to look like vista.

Change the BSOD color:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=653343

Generate a BSOD:
https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-fake-a-blue-screen-of-death-2626111

[borlafu 0]

Nice links wutske, anyway I don't get many BSoDs on Windows XP... in fact I don't remember any :S It would be nice for BSoD '98... ups!! Windows '98

[wutske 0]

This would be THE combination for people who want their windowsXP to look like vista.

 

Change the BSOD color:

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=653343

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/90740

 

Generate a BSOD:

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-fake-a-blue-screen-of-death-2626111

 

I've given it a try ... changing colors didn't work ... ctrl-scrolllock-scrolllock didn't work either .

First one has 2 possible reasons:

lack of correct shutdown and reboot (only crashed it after changing it)

it'll never work: as I already tought, applies to win3.x only

 

Second one, different story:

this DOES work, I've did it before, but the settings were altered by x-setup (if not mistaken)

my keyboard might not send the ctrl-scrll-scrll correctly (it's a wireles logitech)

the driver wich is responsible for this feature (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/244139) is replaced.

//edit: reason why it didn't work: "The computer uses only a universal serial bus (USB) keyboard."

 

 

Strange thing is, when I had colors set to brigt red/bright white ... crashing windows (by overclocking) didn't gave me a BSOD, but a monitor that ran out of range ...

Edited December 8, 2006 by wutske (see edit history)