Microsoft's 40-Year-Old Blue Screen Morphs into Black

Microsoft's 40-year-old Blue Screen of Death has turned black, aiming to streamline error recovery. This change follows the 2024 CrowdStrike outage that crashed 8.5 million devices. The new black screen features a simplified message and a restart progress indicator, aligning with Windows 11's design principles.
The infamous frowning face and QR code are gone, replaced by a concise message and a percentage indicator for the restart process. This update is part of Microsoft's Windows Resiliency Initiative, introduced after the 2024 CrowdStrike incident that disrupted millions of systems worldwide.
The 2024 CrowdStrike outage affected 8.5 million devices, highlighting the need for more resilient system recovery mechanisms.