How the Blue Screen of Death Wreaked Havoc During a 12-Hour Microsoft Outage in the US

At 6 p.m. on Friday, it seemed as if the world had stood still on the east coast of the USA. Airlines, emergency services and media companies across the USA saw a blank screen on their IT systems. News broadcasts were interrupted, and airlines such as American, United and Delta even had to ground their flights. The Blue Screen of Death had struck.

Users reported the glitches on cybersecurity company Crowdstrike’s subreddit. Soon after, people from all corners of the world, including the US, Australia, and India, reported facing the same issue – the Blue Screen of Death.

The Microsoft operating system failure hit various sectors in the UScausing critical services to be disrupted for at least 12 hours.

MICROSOFT FAILURE, FROM US TO THE WORLD

Friday’s outage spread from the U.S. to Asia after Microsoft Corp. reported an outage of its online services.

Major companies that reported problems with their communications and customer service included the London Stock Exchange, fast-food giant McDonald’s, United Airlines and the LSE Group, among others.

DownDectector, a user-reported internet outage tracking portal, has reported increasing outages in services from Visa, ADT Security, Amazon and airlines such as American Airlines and Delta.

Microsoft has acknowledged the issue and stated that it is “working to redirect affected traffic to alternative systems to mitigate the impact more quickly” and that it is “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

The Blue Screen of Death, a stop error or stop screen from Microsoft, has been appearing in the United States. It is a critical system error in Windows operating systems that indicates that the system has a serious problem and needs to be urgently fixed.

The Microsoft outage was caused by a glitch in the “Falcon sensor” of the US cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike, which is reportedly being updated.

EMERGENCY CALL 911 NOW IN THE USA

It was an emergency like never before. The American emergency number 911 was not spared from the Microsoft outage either. It was disrupted in many parts of the USA and non-emergency call centers are also not working due to the outage.

At least four states reportedly experienced an outage in telephone access to emergency services, rendering 911 calls ineffective, New York City-based Newsweek reported.

Even police and emergency services are dispatching their vehicles manually, the Arizona Republic reported. A dispatcher for American Medical Response discussed with the Arizona Republic how his company’s system was shut down.

But in some areas the 9/11 problem has been solved, Reuters reported.

The power outage also caused problems in hospitals.

MEDICAL RECORDS NOT ACCESSIBLE IN CALIFORNIA AND NEW YORK

White Plains, NY-based physician Tamara Sharf reached out to X to express her concerns and report that electronic medical records (EMR) were outages at major hospitals in the New York and California metropolitan areas.

“Rumor has it that electronic health records are down at major hospitals in New York and California. We’re locked out of Cerner (a healthcare services platform) here and I heard from a friend in Los Angeles that Epic is down at their hospital. Apparently 911 is down there too,” posted Dr. Tamara Sharf.

“Is it really that widespread? What are people experiencing?” Sharf added.

Due to the outage, an incident number was lost in the Phoenix Police Department’s police system, the Arizona Republic reported.

The employees only accepted cash and the service terminals did not work.

Outage hits airlines, stops flights

Several low-cost carriers such as Frontier Airlines, Allegiant and SunCountry reported that their flight operations were affected by cancellations. Even American Airlines’ operations were affected.

Frontier Airlines was among the first carriers to experience problems, with the “major Microsoft technical outage” leading to a temporary halt in operations, Reuters reported.

Allegiant’s website was unavailable due to the Microsoft Azure issue, while SunCountry’s booking and check-in facilities were impacted by a third-party provider.

After closing time, American Airlines resumed operations.

MEDIA HOUSES AFFECTED, ABC REPORTS BLACK SCREENS

Media companies like ABC were affected by the outage and there have been reports of network issues related to Microsoft systems. Sometimes they reboot, sometimes they don’t.

“We’re trying to figure out what’s going on because we’re dealing with a pretty major computer outage right now,” said journalist Mike Rogers, pointing to the black computer screen in his office.

“It’s a global outage, including ours. All of our computers are down. It’s been a systematic process that’s been going on for a couple of hours,” CBC News reported.

“We’re obviously not on air. Trying SkyNews breakfast,” Sky News Sports presenter Jacquie Beltrao cheekily posted on X, along with a photo of her sipping coffee.

A lot can change in minutes, but these were hours of chaos. The Microsoft outage affected emergency services, airlines and media companies across the USA. American Airlines has resumed operations. Things are slowly returning to normal.