Microsoft’s “Blue Screen of Death” dies after 40 years of memes, jokes and t-shirts

Another 1980s icon is gone, like pudding pops and Benetton sweaters. After providing 40 years of tragic news PC Crash to Windows users, Microsoft’s infamous “Blue Screen of Death” It’s gone. The black screen of death replaces it, Sad face.

Blue screens have existed since Windows 1.0 was announced in 1985. It is named after the bright blue colour. This is an important error screen that pops up on your computer using the Microsoft Windows operating system when the system crashes. The text on the screen varies, but may involve a frowned face made up of a colon and left parentheses. 🙁

Microsoft says the new Black Screen of Death, called “Simplified UI for Unexpected Restarts,” will appear in its place on all Windows 11 version 24H2 devices later this summer.

The black screen of death displays the STOP code and the failed system driver, allowing you to more quickly identify the problem that caused the crash rather than needing to use Debugging software.

It’s not just a cosmetic change, it’s part of Microsoft Windows Resiliency InitiativeIt is designed to increase the resilience and security of Windows systems. in Thursday’s blog postMicrosoft said the new Black Screen of Death is part of “Streamline the Unexpected Restart Experience” and part of supporting “Quick Machine Recovery.” The goal is to reduce the recovery time to 2 seconds after a PC crash.

The Windows Resiliency initiative was launched after the 2024 Cloud Strike outage, bringing numerous corporate, airport and government services systems offline. Over 8 million devices have been affected.

Pop culture icon

For over 40 years, Blue Screen of Death has worked on pop culture. Lots of memesa Subreddit dedicated to itand T-shirt Other items with that image.

When Microsoft suffered a massive global IT outage due to a cloud strike security update in July 2024, 1x users are called that day International Blues Screen Dayshare all the photos of the meeting room full of laptops, all showing the blue screen of death.

Something about the unmistakable blue colour of the error screen is mixed with the Frowny Emoticon – and reminded everyone’s computers that occasionally crashed, making it an icon.

“I bought my husband a blue screen for his death t-shirt, and he wore it to work at Microsoft’s headquarters,” said CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper. “I thought a bit about whether someone would offend me, but on the first day he was wearing it, several people came to him in the cafeteria to complement it and ask where I could buy it myself.”