Goth Aesthetic Gone Wild: A User's Self-Inflicted Black Screen of Non-Death in Windows 3.1
The Register, Saturday, October 31st, 2026
Microsoft's Raymond Chen recounts a customer who made Windows 3.1 show a blank screen by setting every interface color to black.
The Register reports that Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen explained what Windows does when the power button is held down and shared a story about a customer who called support because Windows 3.1 showed only a blank screen after the logo.
The support engineer worked out that the customer had set the wallpaper, title bar, button and window background colors to black, creating an accidental Goth theme.
The article compares it to a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy passage about black controls labeled in black on black.