Microsoft experiences global outage leaving Windows users with blue screen of death
The blue screen of death plagued Windows users globally as Microsoft experienced a major outage due to a faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike.
The outage was raised as banks, airlines, and TV broadcasters in Australia began to go offline. Sky News in the United Kingdom also had its broadcast stopped, while airports in Melbourne, Spain, India, and Germany as well as US air carriers Delta, United, and American Airlines grounded flights.
Local airline Cebu Pacific was also affected, prompting it to release an advisory to passengers.
"The technical issue requires us to handle affected processes manually, potentially causing delays. We are working closely with our teams to mitigate disruptions to our operations and will provide regular updates as the situation progresses," it said on X.
The London stock market was also hit by the glitch, preventing its news from being published, it said in a statement.
"Technical teams are working to restore the service. Other services across the group, including the London Stock Exchange, continue to operate as normal."
New Zealand's parliament also had its computer systems rocked by the outage.
Australian telecommunications firm Telstra suggested the outages were caused by "global issues" plaguing software provided by Microsoft and CrowdStrike.
Microsoft issued a statement saying it was taking "mitigation actions" in response to service issues.
CrowdStrike also issued a support note saying it was "aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor."
Falcon, according to University of Melbourne tech expert Toby Murray, is an endpoint detection and response platform that monitors the computers that it is installed on to detect intrusions like hacks and respond to them.
"We have widespread reports of BSODs on Windows hosts, occurring on multiple sensor versions,” CrowdStrike said in a support note.
It said it identified a "content deployment" related to the issue and reverted the changes.
CrowdStrike also provided users experiencing issues with a workaround:
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Boot Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment
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Navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory
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Locate the file matching “C-00000291*.sys”, and delete it
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Boot the host normally
Online reactions
Since the outage, "Windows" trended on X with over 161k posts, as of writing. Crowdstrike and Microsoft also were topics of discussion on the platform.
Some users began to make light of the situation by making memes on social media, mostly about their work being put on pause due to Microsoft being down.
"Corporate employees thanking that one person because of whom Microsoft is down," one user quipped.
"Happy weekend, thank you #Microsoft #Bluescreen," added another.
corporate girlies rn coz microsoft is down: pic.twitter.com/qGreeHYF44
— ashie (@ashiestclaire) July 19, 2024
"Global Windows outage leaves Mac users even more smug than usual," one user said.