On April 20, 1998, one of the most memorable misfortunes in Microsoft’s history occurred. We’re talking about the “blue screen error” (BSOD) that appeared during the launch of Windows 98. It has been exactly 25 years since the incident, which made a lot of humor material.
At the time, Windows 98 was still in development, but the release date was a few weeks away. Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates and his assistant Chris Capossela intended to showcase the capabilities of the new operating system to the whole world at the COMDEX fair.
Gates was joking
When Gates and Capossela started showing how the “Plug and Play” functionality works by connecting a browser to the PC, the operating system gave a “blue screen error”. Bill and Chris were not confused and immediately started joking to save the situation.
While Capossela, who kept his cool in front of the blue screen, tried not to disrupt the course of the presentation by saying “we continue”, Bill Gates tried to pass the unfortunate event by saying, “This must be the reason why we haven’t released Windows 98 yet”.
Although the blue screen did not first appear with Windows 98, the presentation at COMDEX popularized this feature of Windows operating systems. The notorious error screen continues to exist even in the latest Windows 11 version.
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