Windows 98 ‘blue screen’ demo at Comdex Spring

Around this recording

The recordings either side of it, in order.

All 114 recordings of Bill Gates →

1. 1996

   Charlie Rose

   A full-hour conversation in which Gates, then Microsoft’s CEO, discusses the future of the personal computer, the internet and interactivity, a year after the company’s internet pivot.

2. 1997

   Macworld Expo Boston keynote (satellite appearance)

   Steve Jobs’s first Macworld keynote after returning to Apple, at which he announced a $150 million Microsoft investment, five years of Office for Mac and Internet Explorer as the Mac’s default browser, and brought Gates onto a giant screen by satellite, to boos from the crowd.

3. 1997

   Comdex Fall 1997 keynote (excerpts)

   Highlights of Gates’s Fall Comdex 1997 keynote, preserved within the Computer Chronicles’ end-of-show roundup. The keynote came a month after the Justice Department asked a federal court to hold Microsoft in contempt over Internet Explorer bundling.

4. 1998

   Pie in the face in Brussels

   News footage of Gates being hit with a cream pie by Belgian prankster Noël Godin’s group as he arrived for a meeting with about 400 Belgian educators, business leaders and officials.

5. 1998

   Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on competition in the software industry

   Gates’s first and only congressional appearance of the antitrust era: a televised Senate Judiciary hearing chaired by Orrin Hatch in which he argued the software industry needed no new regulation while Netscape’s Jim Barksdale and Sun’s Scott McNealy accused Microsoft of abusing its Windows monopoly.

6. 1998

   Charlie Rose

   Gates discusses standards of fair competition in the technology marketplace, responding to the previous day’s Senate Judiciary hearing on the Microsoft antitrust fight.

7. 1998

   Windows 98 ‘blue screen’ demo at Comdex Spring

   The famous moment when a Windows 98 beta demonstration crashed to a Blue Screen of Death on stage as assistant Chris Capossela plugged in a scanner to show Plug and Play; Gates quipped, ‘That must be why we’re not shipping Windows 98 yet.’

8. 1998

   Buffett & Gates on success

   Gates and Warren Buffett field questions from University of Washington business students about success, luck, risk and their careers, in the session that became Fortune’s ‘The Bill & Warren Show’ and the PBS special ‘Buffett & Gates Go Back to School’.

9. 1998

   Microsoft eXtreme Spring 1998 (video welcome)

   A VHS of Microsoft’s ‘eXtreme’ consumer roadshow previewing Windows 98, Outlook 98 and other products; according to the archive description the show opens with a welcome from Gates.

10. 1998

    United States v. Microsoft deposition

    Roughly 20 hours of videotape of Gates being questioned by government lawyer David Boies in a Redmond conference room.

11. 1998

    Comdex Fall 1998 keynote (excerpts)

    Excerpts of Gates’s Fall Comdex 1998 keynote, where he unveiled ClearType, survive in two Computer Chronicles episodes. The keynote came four weeks into the antitrust trial and days before the government played his deposition tapes in court.

12. 1998

    User-group presentation at Comdex (Office 2000 and more)

    A 76-minute tape of Gates addressing an Association of PC User Groups audience at Comdex on November 15, 1998, demonstrating Office 2000 and other forthcoming products, with a montage of show-floor interviews appended.

13. 1999

    Comdex Fall 1999 keynote

    Gates’s full Fall Comdex 1999 keynote, covering Windows 2000 Server clustering and remote management, Windows CE devices and Pocket PCs, and the new MSN start page.