Bill Gates, Windows 98, Blue Screen of Death
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as the classic demo failure, in threads about USB, plug and play, and Microsoft's shipping quality.
What it is
A very short clip of Bill Gates hitting a Blue Screen of Death while demonstrating plug and play on Windows 98 on stage.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2019 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Cites rasz · 2021-01 · on “The Confusing World of USB”
Love Fabien write-ups! > badly fragmented connector world made of Dont forget SCSI. USB killed external SCSI. >Up to that point in time, it was a good tech stack. USB 0.9 was 1995, USB 1.0 1996. Two years later we had Bill Gates getting embarrassed by Windows 98 BSOD on stage [this video] . By ~2002 we ended up with 6 separate incompatible proprietary variations on micro USB. Pretty much every second Camera vendor had its won "standard". >USB-3.X cables features 8 wires .... and the other six carry data Sadly just adding even more confusion to the mix. 24 pins, up to 13 signals, 4 pairs (8 wires) dedicated to USB 3.2 alone. >Thanks to DP 1.4, the bandwidth requirement can be lowered via DSP lossl
Cites sublinear · 2026-04 · on “Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight”
I did some more digging to find out that the infamous BSOD demo with Bill Gates on stage was meant to show off plug and play on Windows 98 and caused by a USB scanner. This happened 4 months before the release date of the first iMac. [this video]
Critical esafak · 2023-10 · on “Dave Cutler: The Secret History of Microsoft Windows [video]”
Steve Jobs pushed individual contributors to perfect products before shipping them. Bill Gates had no taste to justify any sort of perfectionism, or any shame in shipping buggy products ( [this video] ). It was all dollars and cents, as far as I can tell.