Who is the creator of the blue screen that appears on Windows?
When an error occurs in the Windows OS, a '
There is no mystery over who wrote the Blue Screen of Death, despite what some may want you to believe - The Old New Thing
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20240730-00/?p=110062
According to Chen, the creators of the Blue Screen of Death are Chen, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer , and Microsoft engineer John Bart . It may sound strange to have three creators, but in fact each of them worked on a different version.
The blue screen itself has existed since Windows 1.0, but as you can see in the movie below, when an error occurs, only random characters are output and no system message is displayed.
Windows 1.0 BSOD (Incorrect DOS Version) - YouTube
The style of displaying system messages on a blue background was adopted from Windows 3.1. The following screen is from Windows 3.1, and the text of the system message was written by Mr. Ballmer. Mr. Ballmer was the head of the systems department at the time, and when he touched and checked Windows 3.1 himself, he didn't like the text of the system message, so he rewrote it himself.
However, the above screen is not the one that appears when an error occurs, but is displayed when you press Ctrl + Alt + Del, so it is not strictly a blue screen. Also, Ballmer was not in charge of the code to display the message, but only the 'message displayed on the screen.'
The fact that 'Ballmer wrote the system messages for Windows 3.1' was also pointed out by Chen in 2014.
The developer of Windows' blue screen reveals unknown facts - GIGAZINE
In Windows 3.x, when an error occurred in the OS, instead of the blue screen like we have today, a screen like the one below called a 'black screen' was displayed.
The Windows NT kernel was the first to display a blue screen when an error occurred, and the following screen was created by Bart. When the blue screen was displayed in the Windows NT kernel, it was almost always the case that the system was in an unrecoverable state at that point, so it was truly a 'blue screen of death.'
According to former Microsoft engineer David Plummer, the design of the blue screen was not inspired by Windows 3.x, but rather because 'the universal color palette at the time was very rudimentary' and 'Bert personally thought that the programming experience was white text on a blue background.'
What Causes a 'Blue Screen' Crash? - YouTube
The existence of blue screens became generally known from the explosive spread of Windows 95. Windows 9x was more prone to blue screens than Windows NT, and the following blue screen was often seen.
Chen was responsible for designing the final version of the Windows 95 blue screen. Although it has a 'white error message on a blue background,' Chen said, 'Windows 95 was not really a 'blue screen of death' because errors could often be ignored.'
According to Mr. Chen's statement, the OS, creator, and release year of the blue screen are summarized as follows.
| OS | Author (title omitted) | Release year |
| Windows 3.1 | Steve Ballmer (text only) | 1992 |
| Windows NT | John Burt | 1993 |
| Windows 95 | Raymond Chen | 1995 |
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