Worldwide Microsoft internet outage impacts Piedmont Triad

GREENSBORO, N.C (WGHP) — A nationwide outage of services that stemmed from a content update for Windows hosts left hospitals, airports, banks and other services with limited access to their devices and systems.

That included airlines at the Piedmont Triad International Airport. Early flights were delayed and canceled. But as the day went on, more flights were on time.

“Why today? Why not yesterday or tomorrow?” said Perry Ivey, whose flight was delayed at PTI on Friday morning.

Travelers at PTI were left to wait.

“It is something that we planned for months, and it is sometimes hard to get off of work. This is going to be pretty rough,” Danielle Tate said.

Even though the situation was frustrating, there was relief. The outage only impacted their vacations.

“I will take it as it comes, but we are fine … There is nothing we have to be there for today, which is a nice position to be in, so we are just waiting for more information,” Joanna Kirkland said.

The outage hit hard for hospital systems.

“About 1:30 this morning, our teams were first alerted to an issue with our computers inside the hospital. Our nursing teams noticed screens starting to turn blue,” Emergency Management Director at Cone Health Ben Wooten said.

Wooten’s team. along with the I.T. teams. got to work immediately.

Cone Health kept the emergency room open and provided care to patients at the hospital, but some surgeries were canceled.

“Everything from our food and nutrition team receiving meal requests from our patients to our environmental services team needing to go clean a room when a patient is ready to go home. We have had to go back pretty old fashioned … and work through those responses one by one,” Wooten said.

The devices impacted had to be worked on by I.T. one at a time.

“I think we are all tired, but we are happy to see things improving,” Wooten said,

Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist said they are working diligently to minimize disruption to patients, and Novant said they have found a solution and are working to resolve the issue on their impacted devices and remain open to care for patients.

The DMV and license plate agencies across North Carolina were also affected by the outage.

Sherupa Jena took the day off of work to go to the DMV to find out she couldn’t get service Friday morning.

“Finally, we found out they are open, and I was like, ‘We need to go back and do it,’” Jena said.

It was a Friday full of lines and unanswered questions as the world waited to come back online.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX8 WGHP.