Microsoft's 'blue screen of death' has died at 40
Microsoft announced the end of its infamous "blue screen of death" in favor of a simple black screen and error code that better enable system recovery after a crash. Photo by Hannibal Hanschke/EPA-EFE
June 28 (UPI) -- The infamous "blue screen of death," which featured a text frown and terrified those who experienced it, no longer exists after Microsoft killed it in favor of a simple black screen and error code.
The blue screen has been in use since Windows 1.0 was made available in 1985, but it will be replaced by the new black screen without the frown with the Microsoft 11, version 24H2 systems starting this summer, CNET reported.
Microsoft used the blue screen to indicate system failures and the need to restart the computer, which often meant a loss of data and time wasted on work that might not have been saved.
The new black screen is a "simplified UI for unexpected restarts" and part of Microsoft's new resiliency program for the Windows operating system.
The black screen is designed to make it much easier and faster to fix problems by providing a stop code and identifying the relevant system driver.
Microsoft says it could reduce system recovery time to as little as 2 seconds following a computer crash.
The tech giant announced the change on Thursday, which addresses concerns raised following the global CrowdStrike outage that affected more than 8 million computers due an undetected error last year on July 19.
The outage affected 911 services, airline travel, television and public infrastructure.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business Insider
OpenAI and Microsoft are dueling over AGI. These real-world tests will prove when AI is really better than humans.
AGI is a pretty silly debate. It's only really important in one way: It governs how the world's most important AI partnership will change in the coming months. That's the deal between OpenAI and Microsoft. This is the situation right now: Until OpenAI achieves Artificial General Intelligence — where AI capabilities surpass those of humans — Microsoft gets a lot of valuable technological and financial benefits from the startup. For instance, OpenAI must share a significant portion of its revenue with Microsoft. That's billions of dollars. One could reasonably argue that this might be why Sam Altman bangs on about OpenAI getting close to AGI soon. Many other experts in the AI field don't talk about this much, or they think the AGI debate is off base in various ways, or just not that important. Even Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, one of the biggest AI boosters on the planet, doesn't like to talk about AGI. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sees things very differently. Wouldn't you? If another company is contractually required to give you oodles of money if they don't reach AGI, then you're probably not going to think we're close to AGI! Nadella has called the push toward AGI "benchmark hacking," which is so delicious. This refers to AI researchers and labs designing AI models to perform well on wonky industry benchmarks, rather than in real life. Here's OpenAI's official definition of AGI: "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work." Other experts have defined it slightly differently. But the main point is that AI machines and software must be better than humans at a wide variety of useful tasks. You can already train an AI model to be better at one or two specific things, but to get to artificial general intelligence, machines must be able to do many different things better than humans. Please help BI improve our Business, Tech, and Innovation coverage by sharing a bit about your role — it will help us tailor content that matters most to people like you. Continue By providing this information, you agree that Business Insider may use this data to improve your site experience and for targeted advertising. By continuing you agree that you accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . My real-world AGI tests Over the past few months, I've devised several real-world tests to see if we've reached AGI. These are fun or annoying everyday things that should just work in a world of AGI, but they don't right now for me. I also canvassed input from readers of my Tech Memo newsletter and tapped my source network for fun suggestions. Here are my real-world tests that will prove we've reached AGI: The PR departments of OpenAI and Anthropic use their own AI technology to answer every journalist's question. Right now, these companies are hiring a ton of human journalists and other communications experts to handle a barrage of reporter questions about AI and the future. When I reach out to these companies, humans answer every time. Unacceptable! Unless this changes, we're not at AGI. This suggestion is from a hedge fund contact, and I love it: Please, please can my Microsoft Outlook email system stop burying important emails while still letting spam through? This one seems like something Microsoft and OpenAI could solve with their AI technology. I haven't seen a fix yet. In a similar vein, can someone please stop Cactus Warehouse from texting me every 2 days with offers for 20% off succulents? I only bought one cactus from you guys once! Come on, AI, this can surely be solved! My 2024 Tesla Model 3 Performance hits potholes in FSD. No wonder tires have to be replaced so often on these EVs. As a human, I can avoid potholes much better. Elon, the AGI gauntlet has been thrown down. Get on this now. Can AI models and chatbots make valuable predictions about the future, or do they mostly just regurgitate what's already known on the internet? I tested this recently, right after the US bombed Iran. ChatGPT's stock-picking ability was put to the test versus a single human analyst. Check out the results here. TL;DR: We are nowhere near AGI on this one. There's a great Google Gemini TV ad where a kid is helping his dad assemble a basketball net. The son is using an Android phone to ask Gemini for the instructions and pointing the camera at his poor father struggling with parts and tools. It's really impressive to watch as Gemini finds the instruction manual online just by "seeing" what's going on live with the product assembly. For AGI to be here, though, the AI needs to just build the damn net itself. I can sit there and read out instructions in an annoying way, while someone else toils with fiddly assembly tasks — we can all do that. Yes, I know these tests seem a bit silly — but AI benchmarks are not the real world, and they can be pretty easily gamed. That last basketball net test is particularly telling for me. Getting an AI system and software to actually assemble a basketball net — that might happen sometime soon. But, getting the same system to do a lot of other physical-world manipulation stuff better than humans, too? Very hard and probably not possible for a very long time. As OpenAI and Microsoft try to resolve their differences, the companies can tap experts to weigh in on whether the startup has reached AGI or not, per the terms of their existing contract, according to The Information. I'm happy to be an expert advisor here. Sam and Satya, let me know if you want help! For now, I'll leave the final words to a real AI expert. Konstantin Mishchenko, an AI research scientist at Meta, recently tweeted this, while citing a blog by another respected expert in the field, Sergey Levine: "While LLMs learned to mimic intelligence from internet data, they never had to actually live and acquire that intelligence directly. They lack the core algorithm for learning from experience. They need a human to do that work for them," Mishchenko wrote, referring to AI models known as large language models. "This suggests, at least to me, that the gap between LLMs and genuine intelligence might be wider than we think. Despite all the talk about AGI either being already here or coming next year, I can't shake off the feeling it's not possible until we come up with something better than a language model mimicking our own idea of how an AI should look," he concluded.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
OpenAI taps Google Cloud TPUs in bid to diversify AI chip supply
-- OpenAI has started using Google's (NASDAQ:GOOGL) artificial intelligence chips to help power ChatGPT and related services, marking its first significant shift away from exclusive reliance on Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) hardware, according to a report by The Information. The move is part of a broader strategy by the AI company to reduce its dependence on Microsoft(NASDAQ:MSFT)-managed infrastructure. Through Google Cloud, OpenAI is renting Google's tensor processing units (TPUs) with the aim of cutting the costs associated with inference computing, the execution of models after training is completed. The decision could offer Google's TPUs a higher profile as a cost-effective alternative to Nvidia's widely used graphics processing units (GPUs), which dominate the AI sector. Previously, OpenAI sourced Nvidia chips primarily via partnerships with Microsoft and Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) to train and deploy its models. While Google is providing some TPU capacity, it is reportedly not offering its most powerful versions to OpenAI, according to sources cited by The Information. That limitation suggests Google's most advanced TPUs remain reserved for internal use, including work on its own large language models under the Gemini project. For OpenAI, access to earlier versions of the TPUs still represents a step toward infrastructure diversification amid growing industry demand. It's still unclear whether OpenAI will use Google chips for model training or limit them to inference workloads. As competition increases and resource constraints deepen, a hybrid-use infrastructure could provide new flexibility for scaling. The arrangement highlights the evolving dynamics of the AI hardware landscape, where companies like Google are leveraging years of investment in both software and custom silicon. For OpenAI, the addition of Google as a chip supplier broadens the ecosystem around its technology stack and addresses growing concerns over availability and cost of compute resources. Related articles OpenAI taps Google Cloud TPUs in bid to diversify AI chip supply - The Information UBS examines how this year's hurricane season could impact European reinsurers Bernstein weighs in on the path ahead for Japanese semiconductor equipment stocks Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Microsoft's infamous Blue Screen of Death is finally going away for good
Microsoft has confirmed that it is killing off its iconic Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). The screen is something most Windows users (unfortunately) are all too familiar with—the azure shade that appears on a person's PC when Windows suffers a total system crash. He was buried in a mushroom casket. Soon he'll be part of the soil CEO of an $11 billion builder empire warns that these housing markets face a short-term oversupply Lifting the veil on the critical—and oft-times overlooked—factors driving AI growth Here's what you need to know about the death of the Blue Screen of Death. Though Windows has changed pretty radically since version 1.0 came out in 1985, several elements of Microsoft's operating system have stuck around in the four decades since, including file folders, scroll bars, resizable windows, and a blue screen that showed when something went wrong. Yes, the bane of Windows users everywhere has been a built-in part of the operating system in some form since the beginning. What is now known as the Blue Screen of Death debuted in Windows 1.0 in 1985, and since then, it has appeared on millions of screens—maybe billions around the world. The Blue Screen of Death has undergone several revisions over the decades, displaying different layouts and other data intended to help users identify the issue with their computer. And as it has sunk into the public consciousness, it's even been used by Microsoft's rivals to poke fun at the company. For decades, Apple's operating system for the Mac, currently known as macOS, has featured the Blue Screen of Death on the system icon representing networked Windows PCs. But it was last year that the Blue Screen of Death caught worldwide attention. The Blue Screen of Death appeared on Windows PCs around the world for days after the infamous CrowdStrike update that took down Windows machines across the globe. Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't killing off the Blue Screen of Death because the company has solved the problem of unexpected crashes and restarts. The BSOD screen will still exist on Windows going forward—just with a new color. After an update to the Windows operating system later this summer, the Blue Screen of Death will become, well, the Black Screen of Death. In a blog post announcing several steps that it is taking to enhance the Windows enterprise experience, Microsoft stated that the changes are 'part of a larger continued effort to reduce disruption in the event of an unexpected restart.' Specifically addressing the BSOD, Microsoft said it was introducing the simplified user interface to go along with a new, shortened recovery experience. 'The updated UI improves readability and aligns better with Windows 11 design principles, while preserving the technical information on the screen for when it is needed,' the company said. In its blog post, Microsoft said that the new Black Screen of Death will replace the Blue Screen of Death in the Windows 11 24H2 update. The company says that the update will be available on all compatible devices 'starting later this summer.' RIP, Blue Screen of Death. We knew you too well. This post originally appeared at to get the Fast Company newsletter: Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
