A faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike is knocking affected PCs and servers offline, forcing them into a recovery boot loop so machines can’t start properly. CrowdStrike is widely used by many businesses worldwide to manage the security of Windows PCs and servers.

Australian banks, airlines, and TV broadcasters first raised the alarm as thousands of machines started to go offline. The issues spread fast as businesses based in Europe started their work day.

UK broadcaster Sky News could not broadcast its morning news bulletins for hours this morning and showed a message apologizing for “the interruption to this broadcast.” Ryanair, one of the biggest airlines in Europe, also says it’s experiencing a “third-party” IT issue, impacting flight departures.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says it’s assisting airlines like Delta, United, and American Airlines due to communications issues. “The FAA is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at US airlines,” says FAA spokesperson Jeannie Shiffer in a statement to The Verge. “Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops for their fleets until the issue is resolved.”

Berlin airport also warns of travel delays due to “technical issues.” The issues have also impacted many 911 emergency call centers in Alaska. One airline in India has even turned to handwritten boarding passes due to the outages.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” says CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz in a post on X. “Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.”

CrowdStrike says the issue has been identified, and a fix has been deployed, but fixing these machines won’t be simple for IT admins. The root cause appears to be an update to the kernel-level driver that CrowdStrike uses to secure Windows machines.

While CrowdStrike identified the issue and reverted the faulty update after “widespread reports of BSODs on Windows hosts,” it doesn’t appear to help machines that have already been impacted.

In a Reddit thread, hundreds of IT admins are reporting widespread issues. The workaround involves booting affected Windows machines into safe mode, navigating to the CrowdStrike directory, and deleting a system file. That will be troublesome on some cloud-based servers or even for Windows laptops deployed and used remotely.

“Our entire company is offline,” says one Reddit poster, while another says 70 percent of their laptops are down and stuck in a boot loop. “Happy Friday,” says one Reddit poster. It looks like IT admins worldwide will have a long day.

In what appears to be a separate outage, Microsoft is also recovering from several issues with its Microsoft 365 apps and services. The root cause of those issues was “a configuration change in a portion of our Azure backend workloads.”

The company is usually found adding new features to the service, regularly adding new options to the various programs and packages that are offered under this umbrella.

Expect in cases where it is not.

This time around, Microsoft has decided to remove some features that have resulted in major changes and limitations to the service.

Changes that certainly are not to impress the user base, particularly impacting folks that make heavy uses of Outlook and OneDrive. Both services will see reduced functionality in certain areas, come next year.

The software titan sent out details about these upcoming changes in an email communique.

Starting November 30, 2023, Microsoft 365 subscribers will no longer be able to associate a new personalized email address with an Outlook.com mailbox. Existing personalized email IDs will continue to function for the foreseeable future, but the ability to add new ones will be removed.

And prior to that, on February 2, 2023, Outlook.com attachments will start counting against a user’s OneDrive data cap. However, in order to make these, Microsoft is offering some leeway by providing 50 GB of extra storage for one year after this above date.

So, if your OneDrive capacity is close to being full, you might want to delete some unnecessary content from your storage before the deadline.

While these changes—the OneDrive revision in particular—are sure to impact customers, at least Redmond has given users ample time to make adjustments before these limitations kick in.

Not fun, though.

Yes, a new Microsoft 365 app is being readied to replace the current Office application.

Days after announcing this new piece of software, the software titan has prepared a short video that provides us with a first look at this upcoming application and all the features and options it is expected to bring.

The video, which is rather quick and covers some of the app’s key features, has been posted on the official Microsoft 365 YouTube channel.

At just 55 seconds, there is not much time to discuss the app in detail, but it suffices for an initial peek at the upcoming app.

Give it a watch:

We get a look at the app’s new icon and look, and the clip does a good job of showing how this app will serve as a new hub for all your documents, presentations, and files across all your applications. It will even include third-party content.

Quick access to all your recent files is also available right within.

You can also easily search for and find files shared by specific people, and all your company apps are conveniently located.

A feed is available to help you prepare for your upcoming meetings and see updates from the people you follow. Powered by Microsoft Graph, personalized recommendations are also available.

So, a pretty neat package overall.

Interestingly, the Office app on Google Play Store has now been renamed to Office (Microsoft 365), though it does not offer the new functionalities that are highlighted in the video above.

This rebranding is all part of the new drive from the company to put the Microsoft 365 branding left, right, and center. Redmond has said that Office.com, the Office app for Windows, and the Office mobile app will all become the Microsoft 365 app in the coming months.

But with the company now wholly entrenched in services and subscriptions, Microsoft 365 has now taken the center stage.

Microsoft Office may still be the most recognized of names around — what with it being the most popular productivity suite in the entire world — but the bigwigs over at Redmond believe that it is time to move on.

And this is why the company is doing another one of its hallmark rebranding that it does almost every year it seems. This time around, Microsoft Office will be rebranded to Microsoft 365.

Yes, you heard that right!

The name Microsoft Office will soon cease to exist, with the suite of productivity applications getting this new label that better reflects the direction the software titan is heading these days.

This is how the company explains this major transformation that will see it step away from this famous name after approximately 30 years:

“Over the last couple years, Microsoft 365 has evolved into our flagship productivity suite, so we are creating an experience to help you get the most out of Microsoft 365. In the coming months, Office.com, the Office mobile app, and the Office app for Windows will become the Microsoft 365 app, with a new icon, a new look, and even more features.”

The transition will begin next month, and the process includes everything from icons and logos, to marketing material and even new features that will be developed to align with the Microsoft 365 brand going forward.

In case you are wondering, the Office apps on desktop and mobile will also go through this change and become Microsoft 365 come January. The applications will automatically update with a new icon and name, with their being no impact to user accounts, profiles, subscriptions, or files.

More information on this transition from Microsoft Office to Microsoft 365 can be found on the FAQ that is available on this page.

Expect Redmond to offer more details about the rebranding when the whole thing begins next month.

We have been seeing ads in Windows since the days of Windows 8, and the amount and intensity of ads in the operating system have ranged from occasional to downright intrusive. Seemingly, this is not something the company wants to change soon.

Office 2021 has become the latest such example of Redmond using its software to promote its service.

In this case, users have paid a one-off fee for software that is being advertised as a subscription-based Microsoft 365 product. These are folks who have made a conscious choice to purchase the suite of productivity apps rather than paying a monthly or annual subscription.

No wonder people are not impressed.

Lee Holmes, a PowerShell developer and Azure Security’s Principal Security Architect, has seen these new ads.

He took to Twitter to share his disappointment:

This is so disappointing. pic.twitter.com/1b9fVMnY2U

— Lee Holmes (@Lee_Holmes) August 12, 2022

He is far from alone in feeling frustrated with the appearance of advertising in a paid-for product.

In recent memory, Microsoft has annoyed many customers by displaying ads for Edge, Office, and OneDrive throughout Windows. The company has even promoted its games and select third-party applications to users who would rather not see these ads.

In this particular case, the ads appear in a bar beneath the Office toolbar and invite users to try out three months of Microsoft 365 Family for $0.99.

While this promotion is far from intrusive and actually offers a decent discount to those who are happy to switch to a subscription plan, that’s not the point.

The placement of this promotional link will definitely be a source of disappointment for these users who have already paid for their Office 2021 license. Worse yet, the company does not offer a way for these users to opt out of these ads.

Thoughts?

The last time this bug reared its face, it was an update for Windows that was the culprit.

No idea what the cause is now.

But like before, the problem is preventing Outlook Search from showing recent emails in results in the latest operating system. A proper fix for the issues does not exist yet, but there is a temporary workaround that might come in handy.

Microsoft acknowledged the issue, explaining:

“When searching in Outlook Desktop on Windows 11 you might not see the most recent emails in the search results. If you check Windows Indexing Options in the Control Panel, the indexing might be running slow or might be paused.”

According to the company, the problem mostly affects users with POP, IMAP, and offline Exchange accounts due to the search feature for these users primarily using the local Windows Search service to index email.

Emails hosted by Microsoft 365 and connected Exchange accounts use Service Search for most search scopes, which the company says are not affected by this issue.

Redmond suggests a temporary workaround while it carries out the investigation. And that involves simply disabling Outlook Search for the time being. The instructions to do so are provided at the support link above.

Interestingly, this is also not the first time Microsoft recommends users disable the Windows Search service to fix problems in the desktop version of Outlook. A similar workaround was proposed last year for those who pulled the trigger and tried out the first preview builds of Windows 11.

The software titan has not indicated when a proper fix will be made available, but expect a solution to this rather severe problem sooner rather than later.

Microsoft has announced that the cloud storage service is getting stories very soon.

This feature will be called photo stories and allow you to share photos and videos you host on the service with family and friends. They will be able to interact with your content via reacts and comments.

Of course, this is not a new concept for Microsoft. The company recently announced a feature for the Xbox app that lets you share gameplay moments with those in your gaming circle.

On OneDrive, you will also be able to customize a photo story by changing your Microsoft Account name and picture. You can also set a cover photo and description for your story.

Once you share a story, it will appear in the Shared tab on your followers’ OneDrive.

Obviously, several privacy-focused features will be built right from the start. You will have the option of removing access for people or even deleting photo stories via dedicated options. It looks like Redmond wants to fully cook this feature before making it available to users.

Another important point here is that these stories are designed to be private and will not appear in search engines.

OneDrive photos stories do not take up extra space, as you would imagine. That’s because you can only share images and clips that are stored on OneDrive. That said, if you delete a photo used in a story, a copy will remain in the cloud and count towards your storage usage.

Microsoft touts the lack of ads as a major selling point for this new feature, and the company also highlights that you don’t need to have a premium subscription in order to use it.

Photo stories are currently supported on the following plans: The free OneDrive Basic with 5 GB of storage, OneDrive Standalone 100 GB, Microsoft 365 Personal, and Microsoft 365 Family.

Work and school accounts are not supported right now.

The software titan has made this new feature available as a public preview in Australia only for the time being. It will arrive in the US and other countries later this year. What we don’t have right now is a timeline for general availability.

Should be soon.

Subscribers could not access their Microsoft 365 services, including Teams, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Graph API, and OneDrive or Business. Users encountered delays and failures when trying to log in, alongside errors when performing searches or accessing the calendar.

It was a mess!

Redmond was quick to take notice and started work on restoring access.

That done, the company explained after an investigation what caused the outage in the first place:

“We’ve confirmed from our updated service monitoring that all services remain healthy following the targeted restarts. Additionally, we completed our investigation into the potential remaining impact to Outlook on the web and confirmed that this is a known issue which is unrelated to this event.

An infrastructure power outage necessitated failing over Microsoft 365 traffic management servicing users primarily in Western Europe. This action failed to property complete, leading to functional delays and access failures for several Microsoft 365 services.”

According to the software titan, the impact was most severe in Western Europe, but a small percentage of users located throughout EMEA, North America, and even the Asia-Pacific regions were also affected by the downtime.

Good thing is that all the issues have been resolved, so everything is working properly for Microsoft 365 subscribers, both in Western Europe and other parts of the world.

All services are working correctly, according to the service status page.

Guess which camp Microsoft is in?

With the final retirement of Internet Explorer, Redmond can finally focus on Edge at peak velocity.

And while the browser continues to get better and better, there is a lot more the software titan has planned for it. This includes features that will be added to Edge in the short term and additions that will take form in the long term.

If you take a look at the newly updated Microsoft 365 roadmap, you will observe that the company has already started work on a few exciting new features for the browser the rollout of which should start very soon.

The list includes what the company calls your favorite tools for browsing the web, including a calculator, a unit converter, and an Internet speed test.

Right now, Edge is a browser full of various tools with varying levels of utility. Some are very useful, others not so much. But it is clear that Redmond wants to keep on adding features like this, and is no mood to stop.

These new additions are on track to roll out in August, so we are mere months away from using these new tools. In fact, the Canary release of Edge, which is at version 105, already includes some of these upcoming features.

While there are sure to be voices that bash Microsoft for bloating its browser with features and niche capabilities that not everyone needs, there will be users who would appreciate their arrival.

Particularly those who are less tech-savvy, as it would save them from downloading shady tools from the web when their browser already offers them natively.

What do you think about filling Edge up with tools like these? Sounds off in the comments below!

With each new season, security solutions like Microsoft Defender continue to improve.

So much so that Redmond is now confident enough to offer it for individuals to protect their PCs and phones. The company has made Microsoft Defender available for end users, meaning the solution is no longer limited to businesses and large organizations.

Individual antivirus and antimalware platformer licenses are now available via Microsoft 365 Personal and Microsoft 365 Family subscriptions. This means that a single Microsoft 365 subscription can now ensure protection for up to five devices, each running a different operating system.

This post on the Microsoft Security blog has the company saying:

“Microsoft Defender is simplified online security that meets you and your family where you are by bringing multiple protections together into a single dashboard. It provides online protection across the devices you and your family use. It offers tips and recommendations to strengthen your protection further. And, as you grow your digital footprint, by adding family members and devices, Defender grows with you and keeps your defenses up to date using trusted technology.”

The app not only protects your Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices if they don’t have security solutions in place already, but it also acts as a hub that brings your alternate security programs like the ones from Norton, McAfee, and Kaspersky to its dashboard.

Microsoft Defender also includes its own malware protection engine. But on Windows, it lets Windows Defender use Windows Security, which already includes malware protection. Same applies to iPhone devices running iOS.

But the big idea is for Microsoft Defender to add an additional layer of protection on devices running alternat operating platforms like Android, iOS, and macOS.

Since Microsoft Defender is much more expansive than Windows Security, it lets users see information about the security status for each of their devices. This makes great use of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint technology.

Of course, the Microsoft Defender app itself is not new, and the official app has been available on the app stores of all major platforms for quite some time. This is simply the launch of a new licensing scheme, geared towards individuals.

More information about Microsoft Defender for Individuals is available on its official website.