What Microsoft Said After Global Outage Hits Flight, Bank Ops

Users of Microsoft Windows across the world are currently experiencing the "Blue Screen of Death" (BSOD) error, which is causing their systems to suddenly shut down or restart.

The users were unable to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services due to an error caused by a recent update at global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

The Microsoft outage began early this morning today and has reportedly affected several companies, airlines, banks, and government offices across India, the US, and Australia.

Pictures posted on social media showed users' screens stuck on the recovery page displaying the following message: "It looks like Windows didn't load correctly. If you'd like to restart and try again, choose Restart my PC below."

"We remain committed in treating this event with the highest priority and urgency while we continue to address the lingering impact for the Microsoft 365 apps that are in a degraded state," the company said.

"Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions," it added.

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Blue Screen errors, also sometimes called black screen errors or STOP code errors, can occur if a serious problem causes Windows to shut down or restart unexpectedly.

What Caused Microsoft Windows Error

Microsoft said the preliminary root cause was a "configuration change" in a portion of its Azure backend workloads.

It caused interruption between storage and compute resources which resulted in connectivity failures that affected downstream Microsoft 365 services dependent on these connections, the US-based company said.

Microsoft Services That Are Hit

Microsoft said the impacted services include: 

- PowerBI: Users may notice that their service is in read-only mode while we address impact. 

- Microsoft Fabric: Users may notice that their service is in read-only mode while we address impact. 

- Microsoft Teams: Users may be unable to leverage Microsoft Teams functions including presence, group chats, and user registration. 

- Microsoft 365 admin center: Admins may be intermittently unable to access the Microsoft 365 admin center and any action may be delayed if accessible. 

- Microsoft Purview: Users will see a delay in events being processed in Microsoft Purview.

- Viva Engage: Users may be unable to access Viva Engage.

Microsoft Services That Have Been Recovered

Microsoft said its "internal telemetry and customer signals" indicate that the following services have recovered: 

- Microsoft Defender: Users may be intermittently unable to access the Microsoft Defender portal. Additionally, users may notice delays of up to two hours when raising new detections. 

- Microsoft Defender for Endpoint: Admins and users may notice API requests failing and errors when opening Alerts in the Alerts page.  

- Microsoft Intune: Users may experience failures with device check-in, syncing and device enrollment. 

- Microsoft OneNote: Users may be unable to sync content, have delays syncing notebooks, or may be unable to open notebooks. 

- OneDrive for Business: Users may be unable to access OneDrive for Business content. 

- SharePoint Online: Users may be unable to access SharePoint Online sites. 

- Windows 365: Admins may be unable to manage existing Cloud PCs or provision new Cloud PCs. End users in the impacted region may not be able to access their Cloud PC. 

Microsoft Outage Hits Flight Ops In India

In India, airlines Spicejet and Akasa Air said they were facing technical issues that affected their booking, check-in, and flight updates.

"We're currently facing a technical issue in providing updates on flight disruptions. Our team is actively working to resolve this issue. We regret for any inconvenience caused and will update you once the issue is resolved. Thank you for your patience and co-operation," Spicejet said in a post on X.

Akasa Air said some of their online services, including bookings and check-ins were temporarily unavailable due to "infrastructure issues" with their service provider.

"Due to infrastructure issues with our service provider, some of our online services, including booking, check-in and manage booking services will be temporarily unavailable. Currently, we are following manual check-in and boarding processes at the airports and hence request passengers with immediate travel plans to reach the airport early to check-in at our counters. We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused and want to assure you that our teams are working with our service provider to resolve the same at the earliest," Akasa Air posted on X.