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Everyone, everywhere is seeing little blue screens of death — and it’s probably a little-t trauma trigger for older computer users who remember the ominous displays common in the 1990s.
That’s because a massive tech outage hit businesses, government agencies, media outlets, and hospitals across the globe Friday. The outage was caused by issues with widely-used cybersecurity software from the company CrowdStrike, which is used on Microsoft’s Windows systems.
When Windows fails, users see what’s called the “Blue Screen of Death” or BSOD. The ominous-looking computer screens have taken many faces. They first became a thing in the 1990s with the Windows 3.0 operating system, and users playing Solitaire or futzing with the now-archaic Microsoft Paint application would see it a whole lot. The screen would give a little advice — “Press CTRL+ALT+DEL” or “check for viruses” — sometimes helpful, sometimes not. In 2011, they got a new, much cuter look. The current Microsoft BSOD shows a frowny face with basically no advice about what users can do on their end to resolve the issue. Microsoft has a page on its website that can explain what the screens themselves don’t, though.
Microsoft users across the globe on Friday took to social media to document their BSOD woes. One Reddit user even started a petition to declare July 19 “Blue Screen Day,” which they hoped would “raise awareness about IT security and resilience.” Only five people have signed it.