
Microsoft says goodbye to the Windows blue screen of death
Microsoft is scrapping its iconic 'blue screen of death,' known for appearing during unexpected restarts on Windows computers. The company revealed a new black iteration in a blog post on Thursday, saying that it is 'streamlining the unexpected restart experience.'
The new black unexpected restart screen is slated to launch this summer on Windows 11 24H2 devices, the company said. Microsoft touted the updates as an 'easier' and 'faster' way to recover from restarts.
The software giant's blue screen of death dates back to the early 1990s, according to longtime Microsoft developer Raymond Chen.
Microsoft also said it plans to update the user interface to match the Windows 11 design and cut downtime during restarts to two seconds for the majority of users.
'This change is part of a larger continued effort to reduce disruption in the event of an unexpected restart,' Microsoft wrote.
The iconic blue screen was seemingly everywhere in July 2024 after a faulty update from CrowdStrike crashed computer systems around the world.

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Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Meta shares jump as AI fuels ad sales, outweighing big capital costs
July 30 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab forecast third-quarter revenue well above analysts' estimates on Wednesday, as artificial intelligence once more powered its core advertising business, sending its shares soaring 11% in extended trading. The bumper results could ease investor worries about the social media giant's frenzied pace of spending, at least for now, as it seeks to change Wall Street's impression that it lags rivals including Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab and Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google in the AI race. Meta raised the bottom end of its annual capital expenditures forecast by $2 billion, to a range of between $66 billion and $72 billion, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts on a call that AI was making big leaps possible in its business that makes money by selling ads on Facebook and Instagram. Rising costs to build out data center infrastructure and employee compensation costs - Meta has been poaching researchers with mega salaries - would push the 2026 expense growth rate above the pace in 2025, Meta said. The company is planning higher capital expenses next year as well. "I think there are all these questions that people have about what are going to be the timelines to get to really strong AI or superintelligence ... we've observed the more aggressive assumptions, or the fastest assumptions, have been the ones that have most accurately predicted what would happen. I think that that just continued to happen over the course of this year too," Zuckerberg said on a conference call with analysts. Investors have largely backed Zuckerberg's pursuit of superintelligence - a hypothetical concept where AI surpasses human intelligence in every possible way - pushing the company's stock up nearly a fifth so far this year. Meta's post-market stock gains on Wednesday, along with those of Microsoft's (MSFT.O), opens new tab, added a combined half a trillion dollars in stock market value. Microsoft said on Wednesday it expects capital expenditure to exceed $30 billion in its fiscal first quarter, far above analysts' estimate of $23.75 billion. At that pace, the company would spend roughly $120 billion on AI this fiscal year. The update came a week after Google parent Alphabet raised its capital spending plans for the year to about $85 billion and signaled more to come next year to meet surging demand for AI services. For the third quarter, Meta said it expected total revenue of $47.5 billion to $50.5 billion, compared with analysts' average estimate of $46.15 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. Its third-quarter guidance assumed a 1% benefit from a weak dollar. It said year-over-year revenue growth in the fourth quarter would be slower than in the third quarter. "AI-driven investments into Meta's advertising business continue to pay off ... But Meta's exorbitant spending on its AI visions will continue to draw questions and scrutiny from investors who are eager to see returns," Emarketer senior analyst Minda Smiley said. She noted that the company's earnings "come against a backdrop of regulatory challenges that Meta faces in the U.S. and abroad, adding more uncertainty to its future." U.S. antitrust regulators have sued Meta to force it to restructure or sell Instagram and WhatsApp, claiming the company sought to monopolize the market for social media platforms used to share updates with friends and family. With court papers due in September, the judge overseeing the case is unlikely to rule until later this year at the earliest. Zuckerberg testified in April that the company was initially slow to recognize the competitive threat of TikTok, and that Meta has over the years tried to build many apps that never gained traction. The founder-CEO has pledged to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build massive AI data centers, having shelled out $14.3 billion for a stake in startup Scale AI and poached its 28-year-old billionaire CEO, Alexandr Wang. After a lackluster reception for its Llama 4 model that led to staff departures, Meta has tried to revitalize its AI push by sparking a high-stakes talent war in which it has doled out more than $100 million in pay packages to researchers from rival firms. 'We're just going to push very aggressively on all of that,' Zuckerberg said on the conference call, referring to Meta's AI strategy. In the second quarter, AI-powered ad recommendations drove about 5% more conversions on Instagram and 3% on Facebook, the company said. Ad conversions refer to a user making a purchase or a commitment after clicking or viewing an ad. The tech giant recently introduced an AI-driven image-to-video ad creation tool under its Advantage+ suite, allowing marketers to generate video ads from static images. Meta reported revenue of $47.52 billion for the quarter ended June 30, which surpassed analysts' average estimate of $44.80 billion. Profit per share of $7.14 for the second quarter also exceeded estimates of $5.92. Instagram, whose Reels product competes with ByteDance's TikTok and YouTube Shorts for ad dollars in the popular short video format, is set to account for more than half of Meta's ad revenue in the U.S. this year, according to eMarketer.


Reuters
3 hours ago
- Reuters
Microsoft to spend record $30 billion this quarter as AI investments pay off
July 30 (Reuters) - Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab forecast on Wednesday a record $30 billion in capital spending for the current fiscal first quarter, after booming sales in its Azure cloud computing business showcased the growing returns on its massive bets on artificial intelligence. Shares of the software company rose 9% in extended trading after it said Azure sales surpassed $75 billion on an annual basis, the first time it has disclosed that figure, beating expectations for $74.62 billion. Microsoft's higher-than-expected capital expenditure forecast - its largest ever for a single quarter - put it on track to potentially outspend its rivals over the next year. It came after Google said it would spend more on data centers to meet demand for AI services, and Meta projected higher sales with only modest increases in spending. The trio of results could help resolve investor questions about whether Big Tech is benefiting from its massive data center buildout, with capital spending to reach $330 billion this year. Microsoft and Meta's results helped fuel a $500-billion gain in AI stocks. "I feel very good that the spend that we're making is correlated to basically contracted, on-the-books business that we need to deliver," Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said on a conference call with investors. Microsoft's cloud business still trails market leader Amazon Web Services (AMZN.O), opens new tab, which had a head start in cloud computing and brought in $107.56 billion in its most recent fiscal year. But investors said Microsoft's new revenue figure indicates its investments are translating to increased sales. "Now that Microsoft's disclosing that number, it's really just helping justify the huge investments," said Dave Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, which holds Microsoft shares. Rival Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab earnings also showed last week that AI spending was rising, but so were the returns, as it beat revenue estimates and lifted its outlay forecast by $10 billion. Microsoft said Azure revenue jumped 39% in the June quarter, more than the average analyst estimate of 34.75%, according to Visible Alpha. The company said it expects growth of 37% for the current quarter, beating analyst estimates of 33.5%, according to Visible Alpha data. Microsoft has said the spending is crucial to overcoming supply constraints that have hampered its ability to meet soaring AI demand. The fiscal first-quarter capital expenditure estimate of $30 billion surpassed analysts' expectations of $23.75 billion, according to Visible Alpha data. In the just-ended fiscal fourth quarter, capital spending rose 27% to $24.2 billion, compared with estimates of $23.08 billion, per Visible Alpha. Microsoft said its Copilot AI tools had surpassed 100 million monthly active users, the first time it has provided such a figure. Google has said rival Gemini has 450 million active users. Overall revenue rose 18% to $76.4 billion in the April-June period, Microsoft's fiscal fourth quarter. Analysts on average expected $73.81 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. Microsoft said its capital spending trended slightly toward longer-lived assets such as data centers, after it previously told investors the mix would shift toward shorter-lived assets such as chips over its 2026 fiscal year. Jonathan Neilson, Microsoft's vice president of investor relations, said that guidance does not mean that Microsoft will not continue to invest in longer-lived assets when capacity is needed to meet demand. "We are going to absolutely invest against that," Neilson said in an interview. The company has emerged as an early leader in making money from AI thanks to its exclusive access to OpenAI's technology. The tie-up has helped attract scores of businesses to its cloud service and allowed Microsoft to swiftly roll out AI products such as its M365 Copilot AI assistant for enterprises. "The bar was set really high. And my impression is they delivered ... They were able to execute in a very demanding environment," said Dan Morgan, portfolio manager at Synovus Trust, which owns Microsoft shares. Microsoft is just $200 billion short of becoming only the second company to hit a $4-trillion valuation, with its shares up about 20% this year. But investor doubts have risen about the OpenAI tie-up as the companies renegotiate the deal and the startup shifts some workloads to rivals, including Google and Oracle . Media reports have said the two are at a deadlock over how much access Microsoft will retain to OpenAI's tech and its stake if OpenAI converts into a public-benefit corporation. Microsoft has tried to reduce its reliance on OpenAI by developing in-house AI technology and broadening its model lineup with partners such as xAI, Meta (META.O), opens new tab, and France's Mistral, hosting their models on Azure for clients.


The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
Wall Street delighted with Microsoft as it spends $100bn on AI
Microsoft, the world's second-most valuable company, is dumping enormous sums of money into its artificial intelligence efforts. At the same time, the company is earning money hand over fist. Investors are thrilled. The enterprise software giant reported fiscal fourth-quarter results that exceeded expectations on Wednesday as the company races to acquire data centers and talent, which continue to be investigated by investors. The company predicted its capital expenditure for the next fiscal year would top $100bn, a 14% increase from the year prior. It's the fifth quarter in a row that Microsoft has beaten Wall Street's expectations. Shares in the company, which is celebrating its 50-year anniversary since it was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in April 1975, are trading a near record of $513, up 22% since the start of the year. The software giant's stock rose more than 7% in extended trading Wednesday. Microsoft, like rivals Alphabet/Google and Amazon, is in an all-out race for data center capacity to meet demand for AI. Last week, Alphabet announced it will $85bn in capital expenditures in 2025, a $10bn increase on what it estimated at the start of the year. Amazon is looking to spend $100bn over the same period. 'Cloud and AI is the driving force of business transformation across every industry and sector,' said Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft. 'We're innovating across the tech stack to help customers adapt and grow in this new era, and this year, Azure surpassed $75bn in revenue, up 34%, driven by growth across all workloads,' Nadella said in a statement. Microsoft reported revenue of $76.4bn, against consensus estimates of $73.81bn, and earnings per share of $3.65, against estimates of $3.37. That corresponds to revenue growth of 18% year-over-year. Revenue in the same period a year earlier came in at $64.73bn. The extraordinary spending on data centers, necessary to power AI products, comes as companies are increasingly outsourcing their computing demands to the cloud. Before the earnings were released, Dan Ives, a financial analyst at Wedbush said Microsoft was on track to $4tn market value 'shortly', and $5tn over the next 18 months as shares moving up to $600 as companies accelerate their adoption of AI technologies. Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion 'This was a slam-dunk quarter for MSFT with cloud and AI driving significant business transformation across every sector and industry as the company continues to capitalize on the AI Revolution unfolding front and center,' Ives said in a statement after Microsoft's numbers were released. The extraordinary cost of hiring top AI talent is also coming into focus. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said Meta was offering $100m in signing bonuses to recruit talent from his company. Facebook parent Meta also reportedly offered a senior Apple engineer $200m to join its 'superintelligence' team. Microsoft, meanwhile, is reported to be offering high-level engineers a yearly salary of as much as $408,000, not including a one-time stock award of as much as $1.9m, plus an annual stock award of $1,476,000, according to Business Insider.