Nearly every Windows user has had a run in with the infamous 鈥淏lue Screen of Death鈥 at some point in their computing life. Now, after more than 40-years of being set against a very recognizable blue, the updated error message will soon be displayed across a black background.
The changes to the notorious error screen come as part of broader efforts by Microsoft to of the Windows operating system in the wake of , which crashed millions of Windows machines worldwide.
鈥淣ow it鈥檚 easier than ever to navigate unexpected restarts and recover faster,鈥 Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft wrote in a Wednesday announcement.
As part of that effort, Microsoft says it's 鈥渟treamlining鈥 what users experience when encountering 鈥渦nexpected restarts鈥 that cause disruptions. And that means a makeover to the infamous error screen.
Beyond the now-black background, Windows' new 鈥渟creen of death鈥 has a slightly shorter message. It's also no longer accompanied by a frowning face 鈥 and instead shows a percentage completed for the restart process.
Microsoft says this 鈥渟implified鈥 user interface for unexpected restarts will be available later this summer on all of its Windows 11 (version 24H2) devices.
And for PCs that may not restart successfully, Microsoft on Wednesday also said it's adding a 鈥渜uick machine recovery鈥 mechanism. The will be particularly useful for during a widespread outage, the tech giant noted, as Microsoft 鈥渃an broadly deploy targeted remediations鈥 and automate fixes with this new mechanism 鈥渨ithout requiring complex manual intervention from IT.鈥
Microsoft said this quick machine recovery will also be 鈥済enerally available鈥 later this summer on Window 11 鈥 with additional capabilities set to launch later in the year.
