Windows 11 Kills The Blue Screen Of Death

John Lister's picture

Windows 11 will soon be available for testing in a less-risky manner. Meanwhile, Microsoft has unveiled some more changes, including an end - of sorts - to the "Blue Screen of Death".

Microsoft has confirmed the system will be available to people in the Windows Insider Program in its Beta testing channel as of July 29. It is officially the first time something resembling the finished Windows 11 is available in a complete and fully usable manner.

Up until then, Windows 11 has only available in the Dev channel, meaning some features and actions may be unavailable. Microsoft also stresses that Dev channel software could be unstable and even crash. It's really aimed at hardcore tech enthusiasts and best run on a separate machine rather than for everyday use.

After the Beta channel, Windows 11 will eventually move on to the Release Preview channel. That's where Microsoft judged the system is effectively complete and theoretically ready for the general public, with this final round of testing simply being to catch any "show stopping" bugs that have somehow slipped through.

Grids Locked

A few more changes have already been unveiled, though it's still mainly the look and feel of the system that's different. Hovering the cursor over the Maximize button in an application Windows will now bring up a series of options for arranging windows on the screen. (Source: neowin.net)

For example, options might include a grid where each window takes up a quarter of the screen, or a layout with one window taking up the entire left-hand side and two other windows taking up the top-right and bottom-left quarters. The idea is to slightly speed up the process by which users can currently arrange windows by individually manipulating them.

Back In Black

One change that hopefully few users will notice is an end to the dreaded Blue Screen of Death that appears when a Windows computer has irretrievably crashed. The screen isn't disappearing, but instead will now have a black background rather than blue. (Source: bbc.co.uk)

The screen, officially called an exception error or stop error, will be otherwise unchanged. As with Windows 10 it will display a QR code which users can photograph and automatically go to a help page covering the specific problem, rather than have to write down a lengthy error code.

What's Your Opinion?

Do you have any interest in testing Windows 11 before its final release? Do you like the sound of the automatic window arrangements? When did you last see the Blue Screen of Death?

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Comments

doulosg's picture

A little 'black humor' from Microsoft?

randyh2's picture

I will not be going to Windows 11 as I would have to buy a new computer.
The one I have works just fine, thank you...

Boots66's picture

I fully agree with Randy, I will not move to Win11 for quite a while. When I do, it’ll cost me!
I bought my last PC some time back, but I loaded it and the identical units for my family members with top-end MB, processor (i7 was just out), a SSD ‘C’ Drive with a large storage ‘D’ Drive and a video card that was one short of the best at the time, fully populated.
I will wait until Mickeysoft stops playing games and pushing people to have to simply buy a new computer. And I have zero plans to run a remote PC in the cloud

davolente_10330's picture

Specifications of PC's that will actually run Win 11 seems to be an all-time shambles so far, with MS dithering about what they do or do not know!

buzzallnight's picture

and it is stable.....
and not as many bugs as 8, 8.1, 10, 11

maybe 12 will be better?

rohnski's picture

Changing BSOD from blue to black is a stupid, trivial, pointless change. Just like most of the other user interface (dis)"improvements" they are pushing.
.
It had been 3-4 years, or more, since I last saw a BSOD.
This week I've been hit half a dozen times. Very annoying.
.
More (dis)"improvements" from MS.
Thanks for nothing.

Their hardware requirements are a PITA. My machine meets all of the requirements except the 8thGen Intel chip. All I have is a 6th gen. I'd like to know specifically what is "missing".

ehowland's picture

I upgraded 3 of my machines to Win11 to try it out.

I did this June 24 and had to do Windows preview and select "DEV" (now Beta will work I guess)

BSOD (booting/restart) was an issue after a day or two, I solved it on two PCs, but gave up on third PC (tried countless things) and rolled it back to Win10 using Macrium Reflect (great product).

I have not tried a clean install.

I can confirm a few things:

UEFI boot is a MUST
GPT drive partition is a MUST
TPM 1.2 is a MUST (it says V 2.0, but V 1.2 works)
Secure boot MUST be an option. It DOES NOT have to be in use, but it must be detected.