A Microsoft outage on July 18-19 affected users globally, with passengers across India left stranded in airports or receiving hand-written boarding passes, while users in Australia struggled to make digital payments and media companies dealt with technical challenges, as many others worldwide found themselves staring at the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ on their devices.

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Details are still emerging and the full impact of the outage is not yet clear, but Microsoft said the issue affecting Windows devices was due to an update from a “third-party software platform.”

India’s Minister for Railways, Information & Broadcasting, Electronics & Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said the government was in touch with Microsoft and that the reason for the outage had been identified, leaving many hopeful that life will return to normal.

The Hindu’s Technology Editor John Xavier explains: