Microsoft users hit by huge outage

Microsoft users around the world are experiencing an error screen known as the “blue screen of death,” amid persisting widespread tech outages.

The U.S. technology giant was impacted by an update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike which led to a major IT outage. Many other businesses have also been affected.

“We’re aware of an issue with Windows 365 Cloud PCs caused by a recent update to CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor software,” Microsoft said on its 365 Status X account.

It advised affected users to “restore their Windows 365 Cloud PC to a known good state prior to the release of the update (July 19, 2024)” and directed them to some online instructions.

In a separate update, Microsoft said users may encounter a bug check — known as BSOD, or the blue screen of death — “and get stuck in a restarting state.”

“We have received reports of successful recovery from some customers attempting multiple Virtual Machine restart operations on affected Virtual Machines,” the company said.

“The affected update has been pulled by CrowdStrike. Customers that are continuing to experience issues should reach out to CrowdStrike for additional assistance.”

CrowdStrike’s CEO said in a statement on X that it was “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.”

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” George Kurtz added.

Earlier, Microsoft had said its cloud services had been restored after an outage that affected its Azure services and Microsoft 365 suite of apps in the central U.S. region. A company spokesperson told Dow Jones these are two different and nonrelated issues: one relating to Azure, and another relating to CrowdStrike.

Microsoft shares were more than 1% lower in premarket trading, off earlier lows.