Windows 11 Will Get A New Color For The Dreaded BSOD

Over the years, there've been many iterations of the Windows operating system. One of the worst errors that Windows users could see on their computers was the so-called Blue Screen of Death or BSOD. The screen got its name from the blue background color and, in recent iterations, had a frowning face warning users that the computer ran into a problem and had to restart.

Over the years, Microsoft has made some changes to the BSOD, including integrating a QR code allowing users to get more information about what possibly caused the crash and potential fixes. With Microsoft now talking up the next version of Windows, Windows 11, a change has surfaced to the BSOD in a Windows 11 preview.

Most notably, the Blue Screen of Death is no longer blue. The upside is we get to keep the BSOD acronym because the screen now has a black background. So it will now be the Black Screen of Death. The change was reportedly to match the BSOD screen color with the black logon and shutdown screens for Windows 11.

The background color change represents the first significant change to the BSOD since Windows 8, when the frowning face was added in 2012. The QR code became part of the screen in 2016. The origins of the BSOD go all the way back to Windows 3.0 and were intended to help people diagnose hardware and memory issues.

Other than the color change, the Windows 11 screen is the same as the screen seen in Windows 10. The screen will include the same stop codes and crash dump to help diagnose issues. Additional changes to Windows 11 will undoubtedly be revealed as the operating system nears commercial availability.