Windows 'Blue Screen of Death' will be dead and buried this summer
Microsoft is removing its infamous error screen from Windows devices after 40 years
👋 Microsoft is removing the infamous Blue Screen of Death in a future Windows update
🙁 The old blue screen, complete with QR code and sad face, will be gone in an update "later this summer" and will be replaced with a simpler, black one
🤔 The reason for this is, according to Microsoft, to improve clarity on any issues that arise and make troubleshooting easier
👴 The Blue Screen of Death has been a part of Windows since the first OS back in 1985, making it forty years old this year
Microsoft has killed off one of Windows' longest-running and most infamous features.
The fateful Blue Screen of Death that millions of users have been greeted with on countless occasions is no more, according to The Verge.
Microsoft revealed in a blog post back in March 2025 that it was trialing a new format for the infamous error screen that drops the blue colour, QR code and :( sad face in favour of a black screen that says "Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart."'
The screen, now officially known as the Black Screen of Death, looks more akin to what you'd see in a Windows update, and will display the stop code and faulty system driver that has caused the system to error out.
In an interview with The Verge, David Weston, vice president of enterprise and OS security at Microsoft, termed this new screen as "an attempt on clarity and providing better information and allowing us and customers to really get to what the core of the issue is so we can fix it faster".
Microsoft is essentially intending to make users' lives easier when it comes to troubleshooting, as the old Blue Screen of Death wouldn't always show the specific error during a crash dump. Changing to this new system should make it easier for folks to work out what's gone wrong.
As for when the Blue Screen of Death will officially, well, die, Microsoft says it'll be rolling out this new version in a Windows 11 update "later this summer". It comes alongside its new Quick Machine Recovery feature that's designed to quickly restore machines that won't boot.
Both of these measures are part of an effort from Microsoft to help prevent, or at least minimize, the effects of large-scale outages, as seen with last year's Crowdstrike incident that left millions of Windows-powered machines booting to a Blue Screen of Death.
RIP Blue Screen of Death – 1985 - 2025. Computing won't be the same without you.
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Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.