Sevile: Famed for blue skies and now Blue Screens of Death

Hotel guests get a blast from the past courtesy of classic Windows BSOD

BORK!BORK!BORK! Today's bork belongs in the dim and distant past – a reminder of when Windows had proper crash screens.

Snapped by an eagle-eyed Register reader, this traditional Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) was found in the delightful Spanish city of Seville.

The five-star Barceló Sevilla Renacimiento hotel is notable for its imposing curved walls and "an architectural design reminiscent of the Guggenheim in New York." Readers would therefore be forgiven for thinking that no euros would be spared when it comes to the signage.

Alas, this is not the case as far as whatever is driving these screens is concerned. Part of the hotel is a conference space, and the "What's On" display is either very unhappy, or an early version of Microsoft Windows (perhaps Windows 7?) is telling visitors that the only upcoming event is a safe boot to stop the operating system choking.

The code 0x00000024 suggests something has happened on the disk. Tapping F8 during startup should permit a chkdsk to hunt out corruption. Alternatively, it could be a driver doing something naughty in the kernel following an update, thus stirring memories of 2024's CrowdStrike incident, in which a faulty update file from the company unleashed mayhem on Windows devices around the world.

The "classic" Blue Screen of Death has become a rarity in recent years, not because Windows is any more reliable, but because Microsoft updated it with a sad emoticon to indicate that something has gone wrong.

However, it is a delight to see the old warhorse every now and again, assuming that the Barceló Sevilla Renacimiento conference center is not plugging a day of sessions on how to deal with obscure and unhelpful error codes. ®