Crowdstrike Update? What Led to The Windows Global Outage

New Delhi: Microsoft has reported a global outage as users across the world are facing the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) error which has suddenly shut their systems.

Read to know what has led to this outage that has affected airports and offices across the world. 

What Led To Windows Global Outage?

In a statement, Microsoft has said that an investigation is underway but it has been identified that a recent CrowdStrike update is the reason behind this widespread issue.

According to the tech giant, the preliminary cause of this outage is a ‘configuration change' in a part of the Azure backend workloads.

This led to issues and interruption between compute resources and storage which further resulted in connectivity issues.

The Microsoft 365 services have been affected by this as they are dependent on these connections.

Microsoft Issues Official Statement

In an official statement, Microsoft has said, “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. Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions.”

In a thread of posts on the social media platform ‘X’, Microsoft has said, “We're investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services. More info posted in the admin center under MO821132 and on https://msft.it/6019lRURc."

“We're working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion. More info is posted in the admin center under MO821132 and on http://status.cloud.microsoft.”

“We remain focused on redirecting the impacted traffic to healthy systems. We still expect that users will continue to see gradual relief as we continue to mitigate the issue."

What is the ‘Blue Screen of Death’?

Blue Screen errors, also known as black screen errors or STOP code errors, occur when a critical issue forces Windows to unexpectedly shut down or restart. Affected users may see messages such as, "Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer," or similar notifications.

These errors can be triggered by both hardware and software issues. Microsoft advises users who have recently installed new hardware and are encountering Blue Screen errors to shut down their PCs, remove the new hardware, and attempt a restart. If restarting is difficult, users are advised to start their PCs in safe mode. Detailed instructions for starting a PC in safe mode can be found on the official Windows support website.