The Day Windows 98 Went Blue

April 20 1998

During the COMDEX Spring ’98 and Windows World shows in Chicago, a public demonstration of the soon-to-be released Windows 98 goes all horribly wrong when Bill Gates’ assistant causes the operating system to crash after plugging in a scanner . Instead of showing the plug-and-play capabilities they were trying to demonstrate, a “Blue Screen of Death” is visible by the entire audience which immediately erupts in laughter. Moments later Bill Gates responded, “That must be why we’re not shipping Windows 98 yet.”

Funnily enough, the assistant, Chris Capossela, has now moved up the executive ranks at Microsoft, recently being promoted to the position of Senior Vice President, Consumer Channels and Central Marketing Group. For Microsoft’s sake, hopefully he’ll present a much better marketing image then he did that fateful day!