So Long, Blue Screen of Death. Amazingly, You’ll Be Missed

Later, Windows 10 (2016) added a QR code, so that rather than declining error messages, you can use your phone to quickly switch to an assistance page. (And then restart anyway, when you realized that it was not an aid.) Then, Windows 11 (2021), which briefly made the dramatic change in the transformation of the BSOD Black, corresponding to the system connection and stopover screens. It was later incomePerhaps in response to anxious cries of confused users and support office engineers.

So what’s different this time?

Back in black: why Microsoft abandons blue

In 2024, a stick Crowdsstrike update Rendered countless PC unusable, removing airlines, railways, banks, television channels, etc. What did they have in common? All proudly displayed the blue screen of death. It is not difficult to imagine that Microsoft wants to distance himself from this imagery by making its crash screen less emblematic, less memorable, less taxableAnd less notable.

Not that Microsoft would never say that. Officially, the new crash screen is part of the Windows resilience initiative wider, designed to make the windows more resilient. And specifically overhangs is a question of clarity and simplicity. According to David Weston, Vice-President of Microsoft, Enterprise and OS Security, it “improves readability and aligns better with the design principles of Windows 11, while preserving technical information on the screen for when it is necessary.”

There is undoubtedly an additional bonus too: the deletion of all the separate visuals of the Windows crash screen gives Apple less to make fun. So, no more addition of BSOD colors and 🙁 to PC macOS icons. Sad face indeed.

Feel blue: Microsoft could regret the change

But before Wired suggests that black is good on everyone, including the Windows locking screen, let’s ask: should Microsoft think again, as in 2021?

A visit to the color theory will tell you that blue is widely considered positive, through cultures. It is the most favored shade associated with calm, serenity and competence. It is the sky and the sea – the shade “everything is probably good”. On the other hand, black is the absence color. Cold. Sinister. The void.

More importantly, the blue screen of death is recognizable. You can spot it on the other side of the room and instantly know that something went very badly. A black crash screen, however, is likely to blend into update screens. And something you certainly don’t want to do is that users in any way confuse both. As a commentator Wired Spotted said: “You wouldn’t change the colors of the traffic signs, so why do this in the computer equivalent?”

Whatever reason – the fact of a negative image, unifying design, simplification of an experience or simply change for pleasure – the blue screen of death is in time borrowed. However, the acronym BSOD will surely live, because there is no chance that the “unexpected restart screen” of Microsoft Collera. It is not a name; It is an understatement.

It will always be a wired death screen, whatever its shade, black or blue. The BSOD is dead. Long live the BSOD.