Farewell to the blue screen: Windows error page goes black this summer
When a faulty CrowdStrike update paralyzed millions of computers a year ago, photos of the blue screens went around the world. They will soon be black.
Bluescreens due to CrowdStrike at New York airport
(Image: Smishra1, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Microsoft wants to say goodbye to the blue screen of death (BSOD) this summer. When a Windows PC crashes and displays an error message, the screen will now display a black screen instead. This was announced by David Weston from Microsoft in a blog post, almost casually announcing the end of a particularly iconic element of Windows. The aim of the change is to improve the legibility of the displayed error message and to bring it more in line with the Windows design guidelines. The change is to be made available “later this summer” for all devices with Windows 11 from version 24H2.
No more photos of numerous blue screens
The blue screen in the event of a faulty Windows installation has been notorious for decades; it was so unpopular over 20 years ago that external parties made it possible to change the color. Microsoft itself last made a fundamental change in 2012. At that time, the sad smiley was introduced with Windows 8 and has been clearly visible on the error page ever since. Years later, Microsoft changed its color to black, but reversed this at the end of 2021. In the spring, Microsoft once again announced a move away from the blue screen, but at the time it still looked like it might turn green instead.
Videos by heise
The end of the blue screen of death is part of a larger initiative by Microsoft to make Windows more resilient. This is also the company's response to the CrowdStrike debacle last summer. Back then, the security company's software paralyzed millions of computers around the world. Photos of the blue screens displayed on them went around the world. A faulty update to CrowdStrike software was responsible for the outage. While the QR code for the underlying error is now also disappearing as part of the farewell to the blue screen, the Linux kernel received extended blue screen information with such QR codes just months ago.
(mho)
