CrowdStrike Windows Reboot Issue: What exactly happened, which PC users are affected and how to fix it [Easy Explainer]

Microsoft Windows outage UPDATE: CrowdStrike CEO says sorry, systems to start recovering soon

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz apologized for the massive global IT outage which impacted the Windows operating system. In an interview to NBC News, he “vowed” to work with CrowdStrike’s partners to get services back online. “Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it’s coming up and it’ll be operational. It could be some time for some systems that won’t automatically recover,” Kurtz said.

“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our company,” he added.

Millions of Windows users began reporting rebooting issues and encountering the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ with their computers this Friday afternoon. This outage is ongoing and has disrupted operations across various sectors, including aviation, publication, and more. The problem is quite widespread, prompting even the Indian government to issue an advisory to mitigate the issues.

This issue has been caused by a content update released by CrowdStrike for Windows hosts—meaning only Windows users were affected, leaving Mac and Linux users unaffected.

This naturally prompts the question:

What Is CrowdStrike And Why Is it Affecting Windows Users?

For those uninitiated, CrowdStrike is an American cybersecurity company that works with companies including Microsoft to deploy tools like Falcon to prevent hacking and other security threats that can affect enterprises, and more. Many companies actively use its services to remain secure, and threat-free.

Now, on Friday, the company released a content update only for Windows that caused several issues with Windows computers running CrowdStrike services. This led to them entering a boot loop—repeatedly restarting and displaying the Blue Screen of Death. The company’s CEO, George Kurtz, says that the issue with the update has been identified, and a fix has already been deployed. However, many systems are still experiencing problems, including millions of enterprise users.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” said George Kurtz, CrowdStrike CEO.

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Which Windows PC Users Are Affected?

It should be noted that not all Windows PCs are affected; only those with the CrowdStrike Falcon sensor software are impacted. This includes a wide range of enterprise users, college students, and retail workers. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, Mac and Linux users are not affected since no update was released for them.

What Is Blue Screen Of Death?

The Blue Screen of Death, a well-known issue affecting Windows computers for years, occurs due to severe problems with the computer and can be caused by various reasons, such as driver issues, hardware failure, or even when a critical process ends abruptly. This error isn’t new and has been reported as a problem since the days of Windows 1.0. Simply put, if you see this error affecting your computer, it means there is certainly something wrong that needs to be fixed for your computer to run normally and securely.

In this case, the issue was specifically due to the content update released by CrowdStrike that conflicted with the Windows system.

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How Can You Solve The CrowdStrike Windows Issue On Your Own?

Based on the massive CrowdStrike troubleshooting thread on Reddit and the CERT-In advisory, there are a few workarounds that can help Windows users get back to working. These include:

1. Boot Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment.
2. Navigate to the C:WindowsSystem32driversCrowdStrike directory.
3. Locate the file matching “C-00000291*.sys” and delete it.
4. Boot the host normally.

If you still can’t get your PC to work, it is best to wait for the official fix to reach your PC. Meanwhile, if you have a Mac or Linux-based computer, you can use that as it is not affected by this content update.