A serious global technology disruption occurred on Friday due to a faulty update from the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, which may have largely faded from public consciousness.
Thanks to administrators and IT departments around the world who quickly acted to resolve the issue that caused many airlines, hospitals, and Windows-based banking networks to go offline.
However, while things may have returned to normal for consumers, IT departments are still grappling with getting their corporate computers back up and running. As Mashable previously reported, the faulty CrowdStrike update required technical fixes and direct access to each affected device. Therefore, for large organizations, this will take some time.
Blue Screen Error.
Fortunately, IT departments now have a helpful assistant thanks to a recently released easier fix from Microsoft.
CrowdStrike issued an updated patch immediately after the faulty version was launched, but for many computers that automatically installed the update, it was too late. After installation, fixing the issue became a manual process that involved booting the computer in Safe Mode to resolve the “Blue Screen of Death” on Windows and then deleting the update file.
While this may seem somewhat technical for the average Windows user, it is not a problem for an IT professional. However, the issue is that this is a time-consuming process: Booting into Safe Mode. Finding the update file. Deleting it. Repeat. This must be done for every affected machine.
Microsoft’s patch, released over the weekend, significantly speeds up this process. Yes, the patch still requires manual work on each computer. But, the more tedious processes have been automated.
Microsoft’s recovery tool uses a bootable USB drive to log into a streamlined version of Windows called Windows Preinstallation Environment or Windows PE. From there, it will automatically delete the CrowdStrike update file causing issues on the affected computers.
As The Verge pointed out, this saves time because it “avoids the need to boot into Safe Mode or require administrative rights on the machine, as the tool simply accesses the disk without needing to boot into the local Windows instance.”
Although a third party is at fault, the only affected devices are computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Thus, it seems Microsoft felt compelled to act to assist its many affected customers.
Microsoft has also provided detailed steps to troubleshoot the CrowdStrike issue across various versions of Windows computers, including details about the USB tool.
