Microsoft outage explained: What is causing the 'Blue Screen of Death' and who all are affected?

A global Microsoft outage has affected users worldwide, including broadcasters, banks, and airliners. Windows users are experiencing the Blue Screen of Death, or BSOD error, causing systems to shut down or restart unexpectedly. A recent CrowdStrike update has been identified as the source of this issue.

The technology major said it is working to fix the affected Microsoft 365 apps and services.

According to Service Health Status update page of Windows operator, the preliminary root cause is "a configuration change in a portion of our Azure backend workloads, caused interruption between storage and compute resources which resulted in connectivity failures that affected downstream Microsoft 365 services dependent on these connection".

Microsoft said that the issue is impacting users attempting to use Microsoft 365 apps and services.

The company said mitigation efforts are underway to solve the issue. "We still expect users to see remediation as we address residual impact," it added.

Impacted services

• Microsoft Teams: Users cannot use Microsoft Teams functions, including presence, group chats, and user registration.
• PowerBI: Users will notice that their service is read-only while we address impact.
• Microsoft Fabric: Users will notice that their service is read-only while we address impact.
• Microsoft 365 admin centre: Admins will be intermittently unable to access the Microsoft 365 admin centre, and any action may be delayed if accessible.
• Microsoft Purview: Users will see a delay in events being processed in Microsoft Purview.

"This issue may be impacting any user attempting to use various Microsoft 365 apps and services," Microsoft said.

The IT corporation said that the services related to Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft OneNote, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, Windows 365 and Viva Engage have been recovered.

Users worldwide affected

Services at Visa, Amazon, ADT security, news outlets in Australia and airlines including American Airlines, Delta, Akasa Air and SpiceJet have been affected.

"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," Akasa Air said in a statement.

"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 posted on X.

The London Stock Exchange has also been affected by the outage. According to British media, the United Kingdom's Sky News went off air.