The notorious Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is finally heading to a junkyard upstate. This error message has been a key part of the Windows experience for almost 40 years. Microsoft has been teasing this change for years, but now we know the crash screen will be removed in an update to Windows 11 that’s coming later this summer.
Windows computers are still going to crash, so there needs to be some sort of error screen. Microsoft is transitioning to a Black Screen of Death instead. This new crash screen will be black, as the name suggests, and there will be no cutesy frowny face and QR code. It’ll just be a black screen with a short message that tells users they need to restart.
The new BSOD recalls the black screen shown during a Windows update, but it will list the stop code and system driver that contributed to the crash. This should make life easier for IT admins.
“This is really an attempt on clarity and providing better information and allowing us and customers to really get to what the core of the issue is so we can fix it faster,” David Weston, vice president of enterprise and OS security at Microsoft, said in an interview with The Verge. “Part of it is just cleaner information on what exactly went wrong.”
The new BSOD will debut alongside the Quick Machine Recovery feature. This tool is designed to restore machines that won’t boot. These changes are being made in the wake of last year’s CrowdStrike incident that crashed over 8 million Windows devices. That massive outage impacted banks, airlines and major corporations.
