Like Pudding Pops and Benetton sweaters, one other Nineteen Eighties icon is gone. After 40 years of delivering the tragic information of a PC crash to Home windows customers, Microsoft’s notorious “blue display screen of demise” goes away. A black display screen of demise can be changing it, albeit with out the unhappy face.
The blue display screen of demise has been round since Home windows 1.0 got here out in 1985. Named for its vivid blue shade, it is a crucial error display screen that pops up on computer systems utilizing the Microsoft Home windows working system when the system crashes. The textual content on the display screen varies, however it’s typically accompanied by a frowning face made up of a colon and a left parenthesis. 🙁
Microsoft says the brand new black display screen of demise, which it calls a “simplified UI for sudden restarts,” will seem as a replacement beginning later this summer season on all Home windows 11, model 24H2 gadgets.
Meet the brand new black display screen of demise.
The black display screen of demise will present the cease code and defective system driver, permitting IT admins to extra shortly establish the problem that precipitated the crash, reasonably than having to make use of debugging software program.
It is not only a beauty change, it is a part of Microsoft’s Home windows Resiliency Initiative, which is designed to extend resiliency and safety in Home windows programs. In a weblog submit on Thursday, Microsoft stated that the brand new black display screen of demise is a part of “streamlining the sudden restart expertise” and aiding in “fast machine restoration.” The purpose is to scale back restoration time to 2 seconds following a PC crash.
The Home windows Resiliency Initiative was launched following 2024’s CrowdStrike outage, which precipitated programs to go offline for quite a few companies, airports and governmental companies. Greater than 8 million gadgets had been affected.
A pop-culture icon
Over 40 years, the blue display screen of demise labored its manner into popular culture, with loads of memes, a subreddit dedicated to it, and T-shirts and different gadgets bearing its picture.
When Microsoft suffered a large international IT outage as a result of a CrowdStrike safety replace in July 2024, one X person dubbed the day Worldwide BlueScreen Day, sharing a photograph of a convention room filled with laptops all displaying the blue display screen of demise.
One thing concerning the unmistakable blue shade of the error display screen combined with the frowny emoticon — and the reminder that everybody’s pc crashed now and again — made it an icon.
“I purchased my husband a blue display screen of demise T-shirt and he wore it to work at Microsoft company headquarters again within the day,” CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper stated. “I questioned for a minute if anybody could be offended, however the first day he wore it, a number of individuals got here as much as him within the cafeteria to go with it and ask the place they might purchase one for themselves.”
