Friday 19 th July 2024 will go down as a date to forget for the American cybersecurity company, CrowdStrike. As you will have almost certainly read by now (or directly experienced), the business issued a faulty software update that left millions of Microsoft Windows computers around the world suffering the “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD) and failing to restart properly.
It was Australian banks, TV broadcasters, and airlines that first raised the alarm, with thousands of machines going offline in a short time period. Before long, the issues reverberated across the globe; as Europeans woke up and commenced their own workdays, it became apparent that retailers, hospitals, and emergency services were also being adversely impacted.
In New Zealand, services such as Auckland Transport and St John were disrupted. Even acting Prime Minister David Seymour was forced to weigh in; the Minister for Regulation confirmed that the issue was not a malicious attack, and expressed relief that “it looks like, by and large, New Zealand has got off luckier than some other countries around the world.”
So, what did cause the BSOD issues?
As PCs and servers across the planet continued to be knocked offline and forced into a recovery boot loop that prevented machines from starting properly, CrowdStrike quickly took the blame for the fiasco.
In the words of CrowdStrike President and CEO, George Kurtz, the company was “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts… this is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
Amid predictions from IT experts that the episode could cost billions of dollars of lost productivity and commerce, and that it could take days for some systems to be fully recovered, it is clear that the bruise to CrowdStrike’s reputation could linger for much longer.
In the words of at least one Reddit user summing up the enormity of the situation, “this is what Y2K wishes it was”.
The return of the legendary ‘Blue Screen of Death’
At this point, many of our blog readers may feel inclined to mention that the “Blue Screen of Death” is hardly a phenomenon borne out of this latest CrowdStrike incident. Indeed, it has been a slightly too familiar sight to many a PC user since Microsoft introduced it with Windows 3.0 way back in 1993.
Of course, the “Blue Screen of Death” is hardly what Microsoft calls it; this critical error screen is officially known as a “stop error”. Basically, if you see such a screen – which typically displays text along the lines of, “Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart” – you will know that your machine’s Windows operating system has crashed.
The infamous BSOD frequently happens due to kernel-level conflicts or bugs. Or to put it another way, the bugs that cause the Blue Screen of Death are often those operating deep within the operating system – a situation that can make them notoriously tricky to diagnose and resolve.
Some classic causes of BSOD errors over the years, though, have included the likes of overheating issues and memory malfunctions.
How to fix the CrowdStrike Blue Screen of Death
It is important to note that the CrowdStrike BSOD issue is very much a problem with Windows PCs – Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted by the bug. Presuming you are among those affected, the problem may have been resolved for you by the time you read this.
Indeed, on the Saturday after the issue hit, the Microsoft Download Center made available a USB tool that, according to the Redmond corporation, can assist IT administrators to resolve the problem. However, in order to use this tool, a user will need to have administrative privileges and a BitLocker recovery key for every Windows PC they need to fix.
For its own part, CrowdStrike has referred customers to its “support portal” for the latest updates. The company added that its website would be continually updated with information on the situation.
If, though, you’re still scrambling for answers to “how can I fix my blue screen?”, one remedy could be to simply restart your computer… again, and again, and again. Indeed, Kurtz stated in a Friday appearance on NBC’s Today show that “many of the customers are rebooting the system and it’s coming up operational because we fixed it on our end.”
Some sources, such as this X user, indicate that rebooting over and over is, in fact, bringing success for some people. Microsoft, too, has stated that according to feedback it has received, repeated rebooting – even as often as 15 times – could help clear the issue.
Such constant rebooting, though, reportedly hasn’t fixed the problem for everyone. CrowdStrike has recommended that those still suffering from the dreaded BSOD should boot up into safe mode, followed by deleting the corrupted file.
These are the exact steps that the CrowdStrike website suggests:
- Booting the Windows PC into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment
- Navigating to the %WINDIR%\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory
- Locating the file matching “C-00000291*.sys” and deleting it
- Booting the host normally.
CrowdStrike recommends an alternative way of solving the problem for those with a public cloud or an alternative virtual environment. More details can be found on the CrowdStrike website.
I still can’t fix my blue screen – what steps should I take next?
Hopefully, pursuing the aforementioned actions – and the further advice and guidance set out on the CrowdStrike website – will allow your business to say goodbye to Blue Screen of Death woes (at least until the next, hopefully non-CrowdStrike-related issue, turns up).