Microsoft outlined a major change to its “Windows Resiliency Initiative” this week in an effort to make the company’s products “more secure and resilient” after last year’s CrowdStrike outage.
In a blog post on Thursday, Microsoft said it is “streamlining the unexpected restart experience” and adding “quick machine recovery, a recovery mechanism for PCs that cannot restart successfully.” But the big change people will notice right away (well, hoping you never have to see it) is that the color of the “blue screen of death,” which has been around for 40 years, will now be black.
Or, as TechCrunch notes, the blue screen of death will now be the “black screen of death.”
The new Windows 11 unexpected restart screen (Courtesy: Microsoft)
“This change is part of a larger, continued effort to reduce disruption in the event of an unexpected restart,” Microsoft wrote in the blog post. “We’re introducing a simplified user interface (UI) that pairs with the shortened experience.”
Microsoft says the blue to black switch, or “updated UI,” helps to improve readability and “aligns better with Windows 11 design principles, while preserving the technical information on the screen for when it is needed.”
Blue digital boards are seen due to the global communications outage caused by CrowdStrike, which provides cybersecurity services to US technology company Microsoft, in Times Square in New York City, on July 19, 2024. (Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The black screens will certainly stand out less if there’s ever another major issue.
The CrowdStrike outage affected more than 8.5 million Windows devices (and all of the businesses that use them, from airlines to sports stadiums), which led to a spate of viral images showing the “blue screen of death” on huge screens from stock exchanges to Times Square.
Related: Read the Memo from CrowdStrike Explaining How Its Update Broke the World’s Computers
