It’s iconic, but Microsoft wishes it wasn’t. In the 90s it was as core to the Windows experience as Paint and Solitaire, but these days it’s not seen very often.
I’m talking, of course, about the Blue Screen of Death. Younger PC users have no idea how common this panic-inducing screen once was, or what it meant.
Whatever you were working on was gone, and your computer needed to restart, something that took ten minutes at the time.Those of us who remember this try to forget, but it’s hard.
To this day, the Blue Screen is a recognizable symbol of things not working, but why did it exist in the first place? Here’s a little trip down the sketchy part of Memory Lane your parents told you not to visit.
Windows 3.1: Ctrl+Alt+Delete Screen
Windows 3.1 didn’t have a blue screen of death: when it totally crashed, you ended up on a black screen. If you were lucky that black screen was the DOS prompt, from which you could launch Windows again. If not, it was time to reset.
There was, however, a blue screen triggerd by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete. This would go on to inspire the design of the Blue Screen of Death to come later.
Interestingly, as a blog post by Raymond Chen points out, the text here was written by none other than future CEO Steve Balmer, back when he ran the Systems Division at Microsoft.
Windows 95 and 98: The Original Blue Screen of Death
It’s hard to overstate how big a deal Windows 95 was: imagine the level of hype surrounding early iPhone models, but for a desktop operating system. People literally lined up outside stores. Yes, the 90s were weird: people were really excited for new features on their desktop. No one, however, was excited for this.
The Blue Screen of Death would show up whenever a program or driver crashed spectacularly. It offered…
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