Photo: reddit user 7U5K3N
The infotainment systems installed in our cars are hardware devices that use software to operate, and just like it happens on a traditional computer, this software is prone to bugs that sometimes cause fatal crashes.
Known in the Windows world as Blue Screens of Death, or BSODs, the errors that completely bring a system to a halt also affect car HUDs and the billboards that we see around us when driving.
And this is exactly what’s happening in the photos that you see here, as the system powering the car’s infotainment system and the street billboards crashed, leading to the infamous BSODs that Windows users already hate.
As far as the car screen error is concerned that’s Windows CE that you see there, so the crash message is a little different than a typical Blue Screen of Death. The issue was encountered on a Chinese car radio which apparently was running Windows CE and not Android, as you’d normally expect these days.
Windows CE running on a car radio system isn’t surprising though. By definition, Windows CE is an embedded operating system, and an infotainment system is an embedded device, just like a cash machine. So it’s essentially an embedded operating system running on an embedded device.
The billboard errors, on the other hand, are typical Blue Screen of Death errors. This means the Windows operating system powering them crashed and the device itself needs to be rebooted. It goes without saying this isn’t necessarily the most convenient thing to do for the administrators of these devices, and it’s probably the reason it usually takes so long to do it.
As a matter of fact, Windows devices can be configured to automatically reboot when hitting a BSOD, albeit in the case of systems used for public services, additional processes need to load on boot and manual restarts might be the recommended approach.
And this is exactly what’s happening in the photos that you see here, as the system powering the car’s infotainment system and the street billboards crashed, leading to the infamous BSODs that Windows users already hate.
As far as the car screen error is concerned that’s Windows CE that you see there, so the crash message is a little different than a typical Blue Screen of Death. The issue was encountered on a Chinese car radio which apparently was running Windows CE and not Android, as you’d normally expect these days.
Windows CE running on a car radio system isn’t surprising though. By definition, Windows CE is an embedded operating system, and an infotainment system is an embedded device, just like a cash machine. So it’s essentially an embedded operating system running on an embedded device.
The billboard errors, on the other hand, are typical Blue Screen of Death errors. This means the Windows operating system powering them crashed and the device itself needs to be rebooted. It goes without saying this isn’t necessarily the most convenient thing to do for the administrators of these devices, and it’s probably the reason it usually takes so long to do it.
As a matter of fact, Windows devices can be configured to automatically reboot when hitting a BSOD, albeit in the case of systems used for public services, additional processes need to load on boot and manual restarts might be the recommended approach.
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