{"id":111621,"date":"2025-09-23T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/?p=111621"},"modified":"2025-09-23T08:53:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T15:53:32","slug":"20250923-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20250923-00\/?p=111621","title":{"rendered":"Another lesson learned from the Windows 98 on-stage USB blue screen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft Production Studios (commonly known inside Microsoft simply as Microsoft Studios) is a large broadcast studio nestled in the trees on Microsoft’s main Redmond Campus.\u00b9 Here’s a video<\/a> hosted by Luke Burbank, local radio personality who is a frequent host for Microsoft internal videos.<\/p>\n

I myself was interviewed at Microsoft Studios for a short video which (I am told) was used as an interstitial by the live streaming team at the Microsoft Build 2023 conference to promote my talk at that conference<\/a> (co-hosted by Clint Rutkas<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The Microsoft Studios building is very unimpressive from the outside, but once you get inside, you find yourself in a high-tech broadcast studio. After going through hair and make-up, I was taken for my interview to a large mostly-empty black room with a giant LED wall backdrop and lots of television cameras backed by what I’m sure is extremely expensive electronic audio and video equipment.\u00b2<\/p>\n

I’m told that the Microsoft Studios building was being designed at the time of the infamous Windows 98 on-stage USB blue screen\u00b3 They modified their design to include a room next to the broadcast room to stage any computer equipment that would be used during a live broadcast. The equipment would be set up and tested before being turned over to the program hosts. They don’t want a repeat of the disaster of experiencing a blue screen error during a live broadcast. So far, it has worked.<\/p>\n

\u00b9 Not to be confused with the Channel 9 Studio<\/a>. I’ve recorded there, too!<\/p>\n

\u00b2 The instructions for dressing for the interview noted, “Your feet may be visible in some camera angles, so wear appropriate footwear.” “Aha,” I thought. “They said nothing about pants!”\u2074<\/p>\n

\u00b3 Some time ago, I wrote a technical explanation of what went wrong<\/a>. TL;DR: For the live demo, they bought a scanner from a local electronics store and never tested it before going on stage. The scanner had a bug.<\/p>\n

\u2074 I wore pants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Test before using.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-111621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-history"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Test before using.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}