Madrid, Jul 19 (EFE).- The Microsoft computer failure, which has brought down airlines, banks and media outlets around the world, has also brought to light one of its worst images when many computers are turned on: the so-called ‘blue screen of death’.
This blue screen of death (BSoD) appears when the Microsoft Windows operating system is unable to recover from a system error or believes that it will not be able to do so. It stops, freezes, or cannot continue to function.
At that point, a blue screen appears, which usually includes an error code that can help diagnose the problem without determining it and forces the computer to restart, according to Microsoft on its corporate website.
On Friday, a faulty update to the Crowdstrike computer security platform was the cause of the failure suffered by Microsoft computers and, therefore, the blocking of computers with Windows operating systems installed.
Josep Albors, director of research and awareness at ESET Spain, has confirmed to EFE that the aforementioned update is what has caused the appearance of blue screens on Windows systems, both clients and servers, leading to a series of problems across the planet, from Australia to Japan and now in Europe and the United States.
Blue screens are a Windows-only feature, not seen on other operating systems such as Mac or Linux; they are an error message that occurs when Windows cannot recover from a system failure, Albors explained.
The ‘blue screen of death’ was the brainchild of Steve Ballmer when he was head of Microsoft’s operating systems division and was designed for Windows 1.0, the company’s first operating system, in 1985.
Since then, the appearance, although still blue, has changed as operating systems have been replaced and the company has tried to reduce the number of failures.
Its current appearance has been the same since Windows appeared, with a light blue background, with a drawing of two dots and a parenthesis, similar to the emoji of sadness and frustration on social networks, and with a universal text that does not indicate the error that caused the crash.
Aside from the specific problem this Friday, when the dreaded blue screen appears, the first thing to do is try to restart the computer. In many cases, if the error is not very serious, the system itself may be able to resolve the crash and start working once more without problems.
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2024-07-19 14:23:23
