Like Pudding Pops and Benetton sweaters, another 1980s icon is gone. After 40 years of delivering the tragic news of a PC crash to Windows users, Microsoft’s infamous “blue screen of death” is going away. A black screen of death will be replacing it, albeit without the sad face.
The blue screen of death has been around since Windows 1.0 came out in 1985. Named for its bright blue color, it’s a critical error screen that pops up on computers using the Microsoft Windows operating system when the system crashes. The text on the screen varies, but it’s sometimes accompanied by a frowning face made up of a colon and a left parenthesis. 🙁
Microsoft says the new black screen of death, which it calls a “simplified UI for unexpected restarts,” will appear in its place starting later this summer on all Windows 11, version 24H2 devices.
