America reboots: Country desperately scrambles back to its feet after grinding to a halt due to world's worst EVER IT meltdown - here's how you're affected

Retailers, airlines and travelers across the world continued to recover late Friday after the the global chaos that unfolded after a devastating software glitch from the company Crowdstrike.

Instead of keeping computer systems safe, the company that pushes security updates for Microsoft Windows, triggered systems across the planet into one of the biggest IT meltdowns in history. 

Millions of people around the globe spent most of the day staring at a 'blue screen of death' as a host of industries with everything from travel to banking, hospitals to hospitality were affected. 

The costs to the economy are yet incalculable. 

Thousands of flights were cancelled, banking and healthcare systems were affected and some TV channels were taken off air.

Following a day of worldwide IT chaos the Texas cybersecurity firm finally came forward to admit that a defect in a simple software update that it had issued, had crashed Windows devices globally.  

Fixing the problem 

The antivirus company has 24,000 customers around the world - many of them huge organizations. A faulty update meant millions of Microsoft users saw the dreaded blue screen of death that pops up when there's a critical error on a PC. 

The company has since deployed a fix but not before widespread mayhem had ensued.  

The fix is not straightforward. Every machine affected needs to be manually restarted in safe mode and not simply switched on and off again. 

The CEO of the firm responsible, George Kurtz, made a groveling apology on American television saying it could be some time before all systems are back up and running.   

The problems were first reported in Australia before spreading across the world, including the United States, leading to delays and long lines at airports.

In New York City's Times Square, the blue 'recovery' screens popping up on laptops appeared on several giant electronic billboards. A few were dark Friday afternoon.

Flight delays and cancellations 

The outage wreaked havoc on people's travel plans with thousands of flights cancelled around the world. 

Passengers who should have been on planes were instead forced to wait out delays.

Many airlines found themselves unable to use their normal systems for checking in passengers or issuing tickets.

Thousands of flights were affected in the U.S. alone, though by late morning on the East Coast airlines said they were beginning to mitigate problems and resume some service.

By late afternoon Eastern time, the worst appeared to be over, though there were still lingering cancellations and delays do to the cascading effect of the disruption. 

On Friday night, passengers hoping to catch flights were hunkering down in terminals. 

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement it was closely monitoring the technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines and that several airlines had requested its assistance with ground stops. 

Healthcare 

Doctors offices were forced to let down patients after they found themselves without access to patient medical records or notes. 

At some places only the sickest patients were being seen with only written prescriptions were available after the electronic system failed. 

The American Hospital Association said the impact varied widely: Some hospitals were not affected while others had to delay, divert or cancel care. 

Mass General Brigham - one of the biggest healthcare systems in the country - axed all non-urgent visits, procedures and surgeries amid a global IT failure.

Hospitals were thrown into chaos as the outage knocked computers and medical devices offline, forcing medical staff to revert to pen and paper.

Mass General Brigham in Boston - which sees 2.5million patients a year in its 15 hospitals and clinics - said it would only provide care to patients who have urgent health problems. 

Tufts Medical Center and South Shore Health, also in Boston, were also experiencing issues linked to the global tech outage. 

In New York, The Mount Sinai Health System, which operates seven major hospitals in New York City and Long Island, as well as dozens of specialty and out patient clinics across the five boroughs, saw its computer systems go down because of the outage. 

Workers throughout the institution, which is ranked as one of the best in the country, have had to move to pen and paper medical charting.  

Employees at Cornell in New York also said some of their systems went down. 

Other hospital systems affected include Cleveland Clinic, Kaleida Health/Cayuga in Buffalo, Harris Health System in Texas, the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, Memorial Hermann in Texas, Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio and Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. 

Harris Health System, which runs public hospitals and clinics in the Houston area, said early Friday it had to suspend hospital visits 'until further notice.' Elective hospital procedures were canceled and rescheduled. 

Healthcare workers say Epic, a major medical software program, is non operational and causing the disruption in accessing patient charts. 

Epic is used in hospitals across the world. According to the company, more than 305million patients have a current electronic record in Epic.

While paper charts were once the norm in healthcare, the advent of technology in the medical field made them obsolete and nearly all day-to-day operations are conducted via computer programs.

Businesses 

Businesses were also unable to serve customers using credit card or debit cards. 

Hospitality businesses such as McDonalds and Starbucks suffered problems with their payment systems due to the outages, causing long lines to form at some of the the chains' stores. 

A firm representing payroll processors has warned millions risk missing their payday because of the CrowdStrike issue. 

Melanie Pizzey, the CEO of the Global Payroll Association, said it had been contacted by 'numerous clients... who have been unable to access their payroll software due to the Microsoft outage'.

She added: 'We could see a backlog with regard to processing payrolls for the coming month end which may delay employees from receiving their monthly wage.'

Banking

Several of America's biggest banks saw their systems crash on Friday morning, preventing people from accessing their accounts or receiving or sending money. 

TD Bank and Bank of America was still down for millions until well into the afternoon.

The Global Payroll Association (GPA) warned that people 'risk going without their wages' because their employers or banks rely on CrowdStrike for cybersecurity protection. 

Payroll systems typically need to be notified of any issues that would stop direct deposits from going through at least two days before the payday for the issue to be resolved in time.

American Express said it temporarily had some difficulties processing transactions, while TD Bank responded to online complaints by saying it was working to restore customers´ ability to access their accounts. 

Several local TV stations in the U.S. were prevented from airing the news early on Friday morning. 

 KSHB-TV in Kansas City, Missouri, aired Scripps News instead of local news until about 5:35am., the stations said on its website.

Other local stations owned by Scripps reported similar problems, though Scripps spokesman Michael Perry said early Friday that 90 percent of stations were able to air local news. 

At WESH-TV in Daytona, Florida, some of the studio's screens were not functioning properly. 

Some state and local governments reported problems at courts, motor vehicles departments, unemployment agencies, emergency call centers and other offices, but as the day progressed many of the systems were getting back to normal.