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 Edition, it starred in one of the most embarrassing moments in Microsoft’s history when it showed a blue screen in the process of installing a scanner during a demo event. That moment turns 25 today.
Recapitulating a bit what happened on that April 20, 1998, Microsoft was presenting Windows 98 at the COMDEX event that was held in the American city of Chicago. Bill Gates, who was CEO and Chairman of Microsoft at the time, was accompanied at the presentation by his assistant, Chris Capossela, who hooked up a scanner to demonstrate the capabilities plug&play of the system.
After connecting the scanner to the computer, Windows 98, which was in beta at the time, showed a blue screen of death, BSOD in its acronym in Englishwhich come to be the initials of Blue Screen of Death. Capossela, who is currently executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Microsoft, was unable to hide his “earth swallow me!” face. as a finish to the nervousness that he was already dragging, while Bill Gates, with a certain touch of humor and another of sarcasm, said the following sentence: “That must be the reason we haven’t released Windows 98 yet.”.
After the Blue Screen of Death appeared at the Windows 98 demo, the audience erupted in applause and jubilation. Here we enter the field of each other’s thoughts, so it is to be assumed that some did so in solidarity with Gates and Capossela and others by way of mockery or sarcasm. That finished off an episode that, for better or worse, has remained for posterity.
Windows 98 began to be marketed in June 1998. Despite not revolutionizing as Windows 95 did at the time, it brought new features such as disk space liberator, the updater (Windows Update), multi-monitor support and Internet connection sharing. It introduced 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, the biggest negative Windows 98 page is possibly not the incident of the blue screen in the presentation or some beginnings in which it was not going quite smoothly, but the fact that was a precursor to the monopoly of the infamous Internet Exploreran abomination that today is still in force due to the dependence on companies and especially public administrations.
Despite being 25 years old, today it is not so unlikely to find computers running Windows 98. In fact, the European Space Agency (ESA) recently had to face an update process for the Mars probe Express, which was launched 20 years ago, orbits the red planet and uses the mentioned operating system.
