BEECH GROVE, Ind. -- Anger among customers at Bureau of Motor Vehicles branches was mounting Friday as a computer upgrade left some of them unable to complete transactions for the third straight day.

Despite assurances from BMV officials Thursday that the situation was improving, long lines and frustrated people indicated that it hadn't gotten any better at the Beech Grove branch on Friday.

The entire computer system was down again on Friday morning, impacting BMV branches statewide and bringing business to a halt, 6News' Norman Cox reported.

Some customers were back at the Beech Grove branch after failed attempts on Thursday, but weren't having any better luck. Customers were told they would have to wait several hours regardless of the type of transaction they wanted to make.

"I got here at about 8:40. The computers went down at about 9:15, and I'm getting out of here now (about 10:45 a.m.)," one man said. "The whole system went down again."

"I've been waiting for at least an hour-and-a-half," another man said. "They say the systems are down, but what can we do after that?"

"I finally got signed in and they said, 'It'll be a three-hour wait,'" another customer said.

Since branches began using the new computer system on Wednesday, branches have been unable to handle certain types of transactions regardless of whether the system was functioning.

Over the Fourth of July weekend, the BMV closed all branches and cut off self-service and online transactions to complete the multimillion-dollar computer upgrade, which had been in the works for eight years.

Online service and self-service terminals had yet to be reactivated Friday. Both were supposed to be available by the end of the week, but the BMV said Friday that it now had no timetable for the return of those two services.

BMV officials said they were working to rectify the computer problems, but they didn't seem as confident about that on Friday as they were on Thursday, Cox reported.

The BMV blamed the problems on the old system, saying it isn't allowing all information to be transferred to the new system.

"It's certainly regrettable," BMV spokesman Greg Cook said. "We don't want any customer, of course, to be inconvenienced, but implementing a new system is a challenge.

"The good news is, of course, with each passing day, the system seems to be running much more smoothly."

Some residents face a July 15 deadline to renew their vehicle registrations. Cook said the BMV is considering extending that deadline because of the computer problems.