Computing: The truth behind Microsoft’s computer failure

MEXICO CITY (apro).-The company founded by Bill Gates, Microsoft, has dominated the operating system market for many years. For example, Apple has only 16% of the market in this area and Linux does not reach more than 3%. Everything else is Windows. And this is no small thing. Today there are about 1.4 billion Windows users in the world. Well, considering this, the relevance of an error in the Windows operating system can be world news and this happened last week when the “blue screens of death” appeared, which are warnings that the operating system gives when there is a critical failure and then the machine stops working.

What happened was a failure in a software update by the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, which caused the crash of thousands of Microsoft servers which, through their Azure services, help run the operations of many companies. In fact, the failure caused blockages in airports, train stations and service companies (which use Azure), which in some cases led to operations being halted, even at the departure and arrival of planes.

In fact, some simulations have already appeared showing how in the United States, the flow of aeronautics came to a near standstill due to the problem presented by computers using Windows. The reality is that the problem has been magnified because the media is trying to sell the news and it is clear that if it is terrible, you have to make a big deal out of it.

And let’s be honest, the problem, despite what some media outlets say, is solved by deleting a specific file and restarting the system. It was not an error that destroyed anyone’s information and in any case it would be equivalent to the problems that occur when, for example, the power goes out at an airport (this is totally illustrative, because practically any airport worth its salt has backup power systems).

There are journalists and communicators who have raised the alarm in their writings and videos, because they reflect on how dependent we human beings are on computer systems. Well, I don’t know what they are alarmed about, because we depend on energy, on the infrastructure already created so that food reaches the stores, so that we have gas and water in our homes, among many other dependencies. Come on, that’s the modern world.

This scandal is striking, just like when computer viruses came out (many years ago) or viruses that demanded a ransom from users in order to decode the information that ransomware programs had encrypted. And this generated the possibility of industries dedicated to correcting the problem that was being faced. Today, with this CrowdStrike problem, it seems that it could generate an entire industry of systems that protect themselves in advance for when an update fails. But for this to happen, a scandal must be created, a lot of noise must be made.

I am of the opinion that even though many media outlets published the “terrible” news about the blue screens, the effect will not last long and it occurs to me that in a week we will not even remember this. And if you don’t believe me, remember the news about the war between Russia and Ukraine, or the conflict in the Gaza Strip. At the beginning, the third world war was almost announced. Today we turn the page of the newspaper because this is already old news that nobody seems to be interested in.