"Microsoft Blue Screen" trended on social media! Some flights were canceled and TV stations were off air, Microsoft said the problem was solved

July 19, 2019, "Microsoft Blue Screen" trended on Weibo, with many netizens sharing pictures showing blue screens on their company computers, indicating that the computers had encountered problems and needed to be restarted. Many netizens said "thank you Microsoft for giving us a long holiday."

According to a report by China Securities Journal, Microsoft reported that its Microsoft 365 applications and services had experienced service disruptions, affecting businesses and users worldwide.

According to a report by the Securities Times, the Federal Aviation Administration's Air Traffic Control System Command Center said that United Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines had issued ground stop orders for all flights. In addition, the London Stock Exchange Group (LSE Group), which operates the London Stock Exchange, said it had encountered a global technical issue that prevented news from being published. The BBC was unable to broadcast its television shows and apologized to its viewers.

On the morning of July 19, Microsoft 365 Status on X said it was investigating a problem affecting users' access to various Microsoft 365 applications and services.

According to a report by Caizheng Daily, cybersecurity software company CrowdStrike said on its support platform that it had received reports of a large number of Windows computers displaying blue screens, and its engineering team had determined that the problem was related to "content deployment" and had already restored the changes. It is suggested that affected users start their computers in safe mode or restore environment, navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike, find the file matching "C-00000291*.sys" and delete it, then the computer can be restarted normally.

On July 19 at night, Microsoft said that the root cause of the global interruption had been resolved, but the residual impact of the security interruption was still affecting some Office 365 applications and services.