While everyone is pouring over the Windows 7 Tutorials, Guides” href=”http://ihackers.net/”>Windows 8 preview, one of the more amusing finds concerns the infamous Windows’ Blue Screen of Death, which is Microsoft’s way of telling you the session of Windows you’ve been working with has failed, either through user error or a computational mistake.

In previous BSoD formats, the screen contained details of the crash, followed by a “restart your computer” command or something similar. In Windows 8, however, the details are no longer featured on the next-gen BSoDs. Instead, they’ve been replaced by a frown smiley and a message telling you your computer gagged and needs to be restarted.

An example of these new BSoDs can be seen leading this post, which comes courtesy of Geek.com. Apparently, Windows was developing a more ominous Black Screen of Death, but instead, chose the more friendly-looking frown.

Because the new BSoD frown face doesn’t offer any details as to why the computer crashed, Geek.com explains what concerned users will need to do in order to find out why:

A reboot is going to happen at this point, but if you want to find out what caused the problem you need to write down or remember the search term it presents you with. The two search terms I have seen suggested so far are “System Service Exception” and “HAL Installation Failed.” I doubt either will return that much useful information as they are both quite generic terms.

Just because we can, here’s a YouTube featuring the history of the various BSoDs Windows users have encountered.

Is the frown face an improvement or does all the information need to be present, as was the case with previous BSoDs?