Microsoft announced it will replace the notorious Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) with a new black screen to improve the restart experience on Windows devices.
The updated screen, described as “simplified,” will appear during unexpected restarts and is set to roll out this summer to all Windows 11 devices running version 24H2 of the operating system. Microsoft expects the reboot time to drop to about two seconds for most users.
The BSOD has been part of Windows since the early 1990s, originating with the “blue screen of unhappiness” in Windows 3.1, which introduced the Control-Alt-Delete shortcut. The classic blue screen itself debuted in 1993 with Windows NT, signaling an unrecoverable system error.
In 2021, a version of the black screen was introduced to Windows 11, featuring updated messages. The blue screen gained renewed attention in July when a global outage caused by CrowdStrike led many Windows devices to display the infamous blue error screen.