How UPS, FedEx, Southwest Airlines, and others benefited from not updating Windows since 1992

A global outage caused by a faulty CrowdStrike system update error has affected Microsoft Windows users worldwide, leading to widespread issues including the infamous ‘blue screen of death’. While many users are still experiencing difficulties booting their PCs, Crowdstrike has resolved the issue, though it may take a few days for everything to return to normal. The outage resulted in grounded airplanes, closed banks, delayed trains, canceled deliveries, and other disruptions. Surprisingly, some major companies such as UPS, FedEx, and Southwest Airlines were unaffected by the bug that impacted the rest of the world.

Still relying on a 32 year old operating system

It’s quite surprising to know that giants like Southwest Airlines, UPS and others were not affected by Crowdstrike’s outage because they depended on a 32-year-old operating system. According to a DigitalTrends report, most of these companies are still running Windows 95 and Windows 3.1. While Southwest has been under fire for the past several years for using an old-school operating system, there’s no denying that it helped the company survive the shutdown that plagued it.

Microsoft Windows outage solution

Microsoft was able to identify the root cause of the problem within hours, but it can still take days for everything to return to normal. Addressing the issue at X, Microsoft head Satya Nadela said: “We are aware of this issue and are working closely with CrowdStrike and the industry as a whole to provide customers with technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online.”

There are several tricks and workarounds on the internet to solve this problem. While a few suggest deleting a specific file after starting the computer in safe mode, the one suggested by Microsoft claims to solve the problem by restarting the system 15 times.