back to article Black screens in Windows 11? Bork has seen it all before

As the latest twist in the Windows 11 saga appears to have turned the blue in "Blue Screen of Death" to black, a glimpse into the international world of bork shows that a black background has always been the harbinger of a poorly computer. A case in point is the sad screen in the doorway of the Salsa clothing store and snapped …

  1. Chris G

    W11

    I got my first W11 nag on Saturday on the opening screen when I powered up.

    I shall be ignoring that for as long as possible, to see what horrors await.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: W11

      I'm only being offered W10 20H2

      I must be doing something wrong.

      1. AMBxx Silver badge

        Re: W11

        Need to be an Insider on the suicidal Dev track

        1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
          Windows

          Re: W11

          Where's your sense of adventure? C'mon, live a little!

          GJC

      2. NoneSuch Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Best Homer Simpson

        Mmmmmmmm, Guru Meditation Error....

    2. AMBxx Silver badge

      Re: W11

      It's worth a look just to see what horrible design decisions are made when you try and shoehorn new ideas into an existing UI.

      Central start button that moves every time you start a new app. Doesn't even look central as you still have the clock etc bottom left.

      New Window management stuff looks nice if you have a really big screen.

      I'm sure it will improve before release.

    3. Phil Kingston

      Re: W11

      Signed up to be an Insider but doesn't want Insider updates?

    4. J27

      Re: W11

      Just switch to the release track.

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    I like blue

    But I think it would be better if all those stores with their fancy digital screens started to think about the ecological cost of their inane advertisements and risk of borkage, and just hung a printed banner that doesn't fall over if the lights go out.

    1. BenDwire Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: I like blue

      But if you think about it, a printed banner is also useless when the lights go out ...

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: I like blue

      IIRC, the majority of people, when asked their favourite colour, reply with blue. So maybe a blue BSOD is more reassuring to neophytes than any other colour. (Not sure if that research was world wide or restricted to a specific geographical region)

    3. Plest Silver badge

      Re: I like blue

      "think about the ecological cost"

      and

      "just hung a printed banner"

      I've not weighed up the cost difference between a low wattage LCD screen powered on for 7-8 hours over recycling thousands of tons of carboard display banners every year, but that's where the real facts need to be brought to the fore.

  3. MiguelC Silver badge

    Pink screen of death, anyone?

    Apparently you can have any colour you want, it's just a registry key value

    1. Anonymous Kiwi

      Re: Pink screen of death, anyone?

      Is it RGBA? 00000000 anyone?

  4. Nodrog

    Black and blue - and green...

    I remember when the Green Screen Of Death first appeared in Windows 10 insider builds, and everyone was led to expect it to be in the final release but of course it wasn't, and the good old BSOD prevailed. I expect the same here with the black version confined to Windows 11 insiders (and green to W10 ones) with the final releases of both to remain blue.

    1. Plest Silver badge

      Re: Black and blue - and green...

      Wouldn't a green screen be an issue for the colour blind? I thought there were types of colour blindness that affect ability to see both red and green pigment?

  5. Swordfish1

    I'm not happy because of TPM 2.0, mandatory requirement, and even if you have that hardware, it does not mean, because of CPU requirements, that the upgrade will be available. I'll stay with windows 10, until it becomes unsupported, then move over to Linux.

    1. shade82000

      For me it's the need for a series 8 or higher Intel CPU which was listed in the requirements last time I checked, but nobody is talking about it. Everyone is focused on TPM and the Start Menu which can be easily moved back to the left.

      I'm here with my i7-7820hq which is a very capable CPU, more than good enough to run eight System Center VMs in Win 10 side by side (one with up to four more nested VMs), but apparently it's not good enough to run a shell facelift on what is basically the same underlying OS. I mean the laptop is three years old this month.

      1. Anonymous Kiwi

        But what happened to the Raspberry Pis ?

    2. Phil Kingston

      It's far from ready for release. No one knows what the eventual supported hardware requirements will be set to.

      But yeah, move to Linux seems to be the call whenever someone doesn't like change.

  6. alain williams Silver badge

    Blue or Black ...

    it is still a BSOD

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Blue or Black ...

      At least it's not gonna be brown.

      1. Trigun

        Re: Blue or Black ...

        Brown Screen of Detah is what you get when you get crypto lockered and realise the backups haven't run recently...

  7. MarcC

    Run Linux and you'll never get a Screen Of Death -- only a kernel panic.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Trying to remember the last time I saw a BSOD and I can't.

      1. shade82000

        It used to happen a lot on my old desktop because I had a few 3rd party peripherals that needed drivers. I remember reading about how stable Windows is and that most BSOD are caused by bad drivers, and it's Windows trying to gracefully handle a driver failure from something that has way more system-level access than a user application crashing, but all people see is Windows crashing. OK the article was written by an MS guy but this has definitely been my experience too. When I removed the peripherals and drivers I got no more BSOD.

        Now I only work on a laptop where all of the hardware and drivers are designed to work together. I get no more situations where the peripheral manufacturer and MS are blaming each other and nothing gets fixed. It's been so stable and I've never seen a BSOD in three years.

        I love Linux but it's always funny when people say "just use Linux." My experience has always been it's better on desktops with vastly different hardware, as long as it's supported. But it's a right pain on a lot of laptops because of all the additional problems like function keys not working, bad power management, and fans running at max speed all the time.

        1. Anonymous Kiwi

          Never had any of that with mine, the trick is to wait until your hardware is about three years old, then they've usually stamped it into the kernel.

          Linux Mint was good, handled the hardware better than Ubuntu.

      2. Anonymous Kiwi

        I used to get one every two years, then it became every month, then twice a week, then not at all. You can probably guess what caused the not at all.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Is Kernel Panic the superior officer to General Protection Fault

      1. MiguelC Silver badge

        Don't forget about General Failure, who's a close relative of General Protection Fault. It was one of them who sent Kernel Panic to investigate reported Illegal Function Calls in some Bad Sector of town.

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Is that where Private Data was being shafted?

      2. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

        I thought General is a higher rank than Colonel but I know a rubbish bin called Waste that claims the rank of General. I think Waste and Fault are both guilty of impersonating an officer and that Panic cannot even spell.

  8. LenG

    Useful code?

    Many many years ago you could buy(!) a TSR to recolourise the Blue Screen of Death. At the time it superceded the detector of "cat like typing" in my ranking of the most useless piece of software ever written.

    Since then I have acquired a couple of cats and realised the cat-like typing detector might have been a good idea.

  9. pie.slapper

    Bring back the Guru meditation error.

    1. Anonymous Kiwi

      It lives on in all of us. I'm sure I remember seeing it somewhere else about 2 weeks ago...

      1. bpfh
        Childcatcher

        Guru meditation error

        I think it’s in Varnish cache.

        Also, I cut my teeth on OS/2 white in black “Trap D”’s (mostly D, although a couple of other letters too). Way more scary than a Win3.1 blue screen

  10. Trigun

    I'm still trying to understand why the CPU limit is currently gen 8 when gen 6 and 7 have the same security & virtualisation options as 8 (5 is where start having fewer). Also, not sure about them moving copy/cut/paste to a small series of icons (although you can click the more options item - but that's an extra step).

    1. Phil Kingston

      I'd guess that it would be to ensure the best user experience. Or something.

      But probably just that they've only tested it on those CPUs. There's nothing quite like saying something will run on a platform only to find it doesn't.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Angel

    Paint it black

    Maybe then, I'll fade away

    And not have to face the facts

    It's not easy facing up

    When your whole world is black

  12. Blackjack Silver badge

    Black? Like in DOS? How nostalgic.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like