Prepare to Feel Old: Blue Screen of Death Edition

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**LordofHats**

Microsoft is ending the blue screen of death.

Microsoft is killing its infamous "Blue Screen of Death" after more than four decades. The notorious error message will soon be set against a black background.

The technology giant made the announcement in a blog post on Thursday as it outlined wider measures to improve the resilience of the Windows operating system.

"Now it's easier than ever to navigate unexpected restarts and recover faster," the company wrote.

The efforts by Microsoft come in light of the 2024 Crowdstike incident which led to a mammoth IT outage, crashing millions of Windows systems across the globe.

How is Microsoft changing its error messages? The "Blue Screen of Death" or Blue Screen error was displayed if a serious problem caused Windows to shut down or restart unexpectedly to prevent data loss.

The company said it is "streamlining" what users experience when confronted with "unexpected restarts" that lead to disruptions.

The steps entail revamping the error screen that greeted users — often frustratingly so — for more than 40 years.

The new error message has a much more condensed text displayed across a black backdrop.

"Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart," it will read, according to an image shared by Microsoft in its blog.

The error message is no longer accompanied by a sad face icon and instead shows a percentage completed for the restart process.

The software company said that this "simplified" user interface for unexpected restarts will be available from later this summer on all of its Windows 11 (version 24H2) devices.

That's right. We're all gonna be old now. Our references to blue screening will never make sense in ten to fifteen years when the young people will have hip new lingo that'll be utterly impenetrable to us, and we'll just be old fuddy duddies who remember the blue screen of death and adobe flash player!

**BorderCountess**

We can at least still use "BSoD".

**Lathe Biosas**

BorderCountess wrote:
We can at least still use "BSoD".

Oh.

I totally misread that as something else... that may or may not require safe words.

**Nevelon**

Who needs a screen to tell you things are bad? back in my day we could identify when went wrong by listening to the beeps when things rebooted. Or the chimes of death on a mac. How fast your network connection was by listening to the modem scream.

Kids these days with their fancy graphics and colors and death screens...

**Flinty**

Nevelon wrote:
Who needs a screen to tell you things are bad? back in my day we could identify when went wrong by listening to the beeps when things rebooted. Or the chimes of death on a mac. How fast your network connection was by listening to the modem scream.

Kids these days with their fancy graphics and colors and death screens...

Luxury! Chimes and beeps? In my day the only way to bug hunt was to check if you were being actively electrocuted or covered in magic smoke!

**Nevelon**

Flinty wrote:
Nevelon wrote:
Who needs a screen to tell you things are bad? back in my day we could identify when went wrong by listening to the beeps when things rebooted. Or the chimes of death on a mac. How fast your network connection was by listening to the modem scream.

Kids these days with their fancy graphics and colors and death screens...

Luxury! Chimes and beeps? In my day the only way to bug hunt was to check if you were being actively electrocuted or covered in magic smoke!

<Nods sagely>

Once the magic smoke leaves the box, it can’t be put back in. A bad sign.

Don’t forget to mark your punchcards in a way to help re-order them after someone drops the tray of them on the floor. A diagonal line marked across the top of the stack will help with the initial sort.

**Overread**

DARN IT now I feel old again....

Stupid interface designs...stupid something grumble getting the kids off the lawn....

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Luxury!

When I were a nipper, yer ‘ad to save yer file, to proper floppy disk, (d’you remember when floppy disk were actually floppy, and yer ‘ad to degauss yer Brass Hand before inserting the floppy disk that were actually floppy, otherwise it’d wipe it, d’you remember? Back in the Nineteen Eiiiiighties) before yer could print? On a Dot Matrix Printer.

D’yer remember Dot Matrix Printers. Made a right racket them did. D’you remember the paper with them likkle holes up the side? And getting yer Brass Hand trapped in t’mechanism? And yer’d need Pearson’s Brass Hand Oil to free it from the mechanism? But yer’d need to carry t’printer down t’shops because yer’d run out and has t’buy some more?

Do you remember?

**Overread**

I remember sold floppy disks for school and having ot save my homework on 2 or 3 because they'd corrupt very easily and that was always a pain!

USB drives were a luxury - no more having to carry more than one and they had MASSIVE storage capacity!!

**Nevelon**

Overread wrote:
I remember sold floppy disks for school and having ot save my homework on 2 or 3 because they'd corrupt very easily and that was always a pain!

USB drives were a luxury - no more having to carry more than one and they had MASSIVE storage capacity!!

Back in the late 90s I worked at the computer helpdesk at a college. End of the semester, student comes in with a floppy disk, no metal shutter, from the bottom of her dirty bookbag. Only copy of her year-long research paper. “The computer won’t read this, can you help?”

I managed to get some raw text off of it.

Backup your files people! Especially of important stuff!

So glad floppy disks are no longer in use. So fragile and prone to failure.

**Lathe Biosas**

It will only be a matter of time that my deep seated hatred of learning HTML will no longer make sense to a generation.

But the same thing will happen to them, when kids say, "Grandpa, what's the 'red ring of death'?"

**The_Pilot**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Luxury!

When I were a nipper, yer ‘ad to save yer file, to proper floppy disk, (d’you remember when floppy disk were actually floppy, and yer ‘ad to degauss yer Brass Hand before inserting the floppy disk that were actually floppy, otherwise it’d wipe it, d’you remember? Back in the Nineteen Eiiiiighties) before yer could print? On a Dot Matrix Printer.

D’yer remember Dot Matrix Printers. Made a right racket them did. D’you remember the paper with them likkle holes up the side? And getting yer Brass Hand trapped in t’mechanism? And yer’d need Pearson’s Brass Hand Oil to free it from the mechanism? But yer’d need to carry t’printer down t’shops because yer’d run out and has t’buy some more?

Do you remember?

Back in my day when you had to climb upside down both ways to school and fight off mammoths, the only way to bug fix was to go inside the computer with a broom tied around your belt, which was the style at the time, and fight off dragonflies the size of two men and poisonous enough to melt titanium! None of this programming grox gak either in your fancy monitors and keyboards, had to physically punch holes in cards by hiring Mike Tyson to program and punch a man to the moon and we liked it that way!

(Not actually that old, just like to exaggerate my old man’s stories)

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

The_Pilot wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Luxury!

When I were a nipper, yer ‘ad to save yer file, to proper floppy disk, (d’you remember when floppy disk were actually floppy, and yer ‘ad to degauss yer Brass Hand before inserting the floppy disk that were actually floppy, otherwise it’d wipe it, d’you remember? Back in the Nineteen Eiiiiighties) before yer could print? On a Dot Matrix Printer.

D’yer remember Dot Matrix Printers. Made a right racket them did. D’you remember the paper with them likkle holes up the side? And getting yer Brass Hand trapped in t’mechanism? And yer’d need Pearson’s Brass Hand Oil to free it from the mechanism? But yer’d need to carry t’printer down t’shops because yer’d run out and has t’buy some more?

Do you remember?

Back in my day when you had to climb upside down both ways to school and fight off mammoths, the only way to bug fix was to go inside the computer with a broom tied around your belt, which was the style at the time, and fight off dragonflies the size of two men and poisonous enough to melt titanium! None of this programming grox gak either in your fancy monitors and keyboards, had to physically punch holes in cards by hiring Mike Tyson to program and punch a man to the moon and we liked it that way!

(Not actually that old, just like to exaggerate my old man’s stories)

But in Britain we ‘ad t’do all t’at wi’ a Brass ‘And!

You Yankees don’t know yer born!

**Dysartes**

Flinty wrote:
In my day the only way to bug hunt was to check if you were being actively electrocuted or covered in magic smoke!

Ah, for the days when bug hunting meant actively checking the circuitry for an insect corpse...

**A.T.**

Blue screen of death - Microsoft basic V2 edition.

Or the dreaded endless loading screen before the better fastloaders came in to use...

**Crispy78**

I still use AS400 daily

**Skinnereal**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
D’yer remember Dot Matrix Printers.

Still in use at fire stations. They're causing us all sorts of trouble, trying to upgrade kit but keep connectivity to those rattly old things. Keeping them running is the other trick. No spares any more.

**Nevelon**

Skinnereal wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
D’yer remember Dot Matrix Printers.
Still in use at fire stations. They're causing us all sorts of trouble, trying to upgrade kit but keep connectivity to those rattly old things. Keeping them running is the other trick. No spares any more.

Legacy hardware is always fun. Sometimes it’s required. At the college I worked at there were devices with dedicated computers with bespoke drives to run them. Upgrading those was always fun.

But for things like printers on people’s desks? Our policy at the time was just buy them a new printer. Between the cost of the dongles/cards/adapters needed to hook the old thing up to your new machine, and the time (and headaches) from IT to support it? Cheeper to just get a new one. And/or comvince them to just use the central office printers.

These days I still need to deal with faxes. It’s all virtual these days on my end, via email and webpages. But the whole system. It’s still the approved way of moving docs, and a lot of insurance companies require them. Sometimes I wonder if it’s virtual on their end. I send an email to a server which turns it into a fax, that gets sent to a server which turns it back. Could cut the middleman right out of this picture. But someone, somewhere might want to get my email printed out on illegible thermal paper…

**Overread**

There's also the issue that upgrading takes time and costs money and the longer they don't upgrade the more those costs tend to creep up.

Plus there's retraining - so many people have a very basic understanding of what they use machines for and if you change the machine or interface they become entirely lost. Some can adapt, some are so set in their ways that adaption is a nightmare struggle.

So many firms will keep that old stuff around even if long run it costs more in upkeep because its just a running cost they don't see instead of a big bill and retraining.

Of course sometimes there's a very specific use/need that the old stuff provides which modern system simply can't do - for all their amazing powers. Or they can do it, but need custom software/hardware to be made or its such a huge work-around that it becomes a very complicated setup (where any problem then becomes a much bigger issue to fix)

**Dysartes**

Skinnereal wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
D’yer remember Dot Matrix Printers.
Still in use at fire stations. They're causing us all sorts of trouble, trying to upgrade kit but keep connectivity to those rattly old things. Keeping them running is the other trick. No spares any more.

...is there a reason why they stick to Dot Matrix - other than for the Spaceballs reference - rather than upgrade to laser printers?