Blue Is So 2016: Meet Microsoft's Green Screen of Death

If you're using a Insider preview version of Windows 10 next year and your system crashes and fills your display with a green screen with an error message, don't be alarmed -- or at least any more alarmed than usual. Your eyesight is not deceiving you, your monitor doesn't need to be re-calibrated: Microsoft is retiring the Blue Screen of Death for preview users.

The change was first hinted at by Microsoft's Sr. Program Manager for Windows Matthijs Hoekstra, before it was apparently first found in the wild by Twitter user @Chris123NT who shared proof. The change is possibly more for Microsoft than it is for users, though. If a user shares a photo of their green screen online, Microsoft's team will recognize it on sight and better know where to file the news of a crash and how to prioritize it.

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The green screen of death isn't even available to Windows Insiders as of today, though, as it's a part of build 14997 of Windows 10, which leaked online earlier this week. This version, expected to be released in 2017, includes a blue-light reduction feature, app folders for the Start Menu and improvements to Microsoft Edge tab management.

@mahoekst so on a hunch I tried to force a bug check and well, yeah... pic.twitter.com/iKeDPT5wu6 — Chris123NT (@Chris123NT) December 29, 2016

If you're considering trying to track down build 14997, we'd suggest you hold off and wait until next year. Unless you're an advanced user, it can be mighty hard to correctly identify a safe version of an OS update, especially when malware runs rampant in third-party app download sources.