Windows 98 He had a trajectory in which he went from less to more. Despite the fact that it is remembered as a good operating system, especially from its second release, it starred in one of the most embarrassing moments in the history of Microsoft, when it showed a blue screen during the demo event in the process of installing the scanner. That moment is today the 25th.

Microsoft recapped a bit of what happened on April 20, 1998, and presented Windows 98 at the COMDEX event held in the American city of Chicago. Bill Gates, who was the CEO and Chairman of Microsoft at the time, was accompanied to the presentation by his assistant, Chris Capossela, who connected the scanner to demonstrate the capabilities plug&play system.

After connecting the scanner to a Windows 98 computer, which was in beta at the time, it showed a blue screen of death, BSOD for short in Englishwhich are initials Blue screen of death. Capossela, who is currently Microsoft’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer, couldn’t hide his “the earth will swallow me up!” face. as a finish to the nervousness he was already dragging on, while Bill Gates, with a certain touch of humor and additional sarcasm, said the following sentence: “That must be why we haven’t released Windows 98 yet.”.

After the blue screen of death appeared on the Windows 98 demo, the audience erupted into applause and cheers. Here we enter the field of mutual thought, so it can be assumed that some did so in solidarity with Gates and Capossela and others through mockery or sarcasm. That ended an episode that, for better or for worse, remained for posterity.



Windows 98 went on sale in June 1998. Despite not bringing a revolution like Windows 95 in its time, it brought new features such as freeing up disk space, updater (Windows Update), support for multiple monitors and Internet connection sharing. It introduced the Windows Driver Model (WDM) as an attempt to replace VxD, although the latter was still supported. On the other hand, WDM Audio incorporated some interesting things for the time, such as software emulation of old hardware to support MS-DOS games, DirectSound support, and MIDI wavetable synthesis.

However, perhaps the biggest downside of Windows 98 is not the blue screen incident in the presentation, or some early days where things didn’t go quite smoothly, but the fact that was the monopoly predecessor of the infamous Internet Exploreran abomination that is still in force today due to dependence on companies and above all public administration.

Although it is 25 years old, today it is not so unlikely that we will find computers with Windows 98. After all, the European Space Agency (ESA) recently had to face the update process for the Mars Express probe, which was launched 20 years ago, in orbit. red planet and uses the already mentioned operating system.