Microsoft Windows Outage: CERT-In Advises Users to Resolve Issue Causing Blue Screen of Death Due to Crowdstrike Update

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) issued a critical alert on Friday, July 19, regarding a widespread outage affecting Microsoft Windows systems due to a recent update in the CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor. This outage affects several international and domestic operations, including the stock market, flight services, corporate offices, IT companies, Airport work, etc.

Also Read | Microsoft Windows Outage: Operations at International Airlines, Banks and Media Outlets Affected After Crowdstrike Update Causes Blue Screen Across the World.

The advisory released by CERT-In shows how numerous Windows hosts equipped with the CrowdStrike agent have encountered system crashes, causing the infamous "Blue Screen of Death" (BSOD). The root cause has been identified as a faulty update within the Falcon Sensor.

Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) issues advisory in the wake of #Microsoft Windows outage. pic.twitter.com/XllRAAJusf

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) July 19, 2024

CrowdStrike has taken steps to revert the global outage that impacted many systems worldwide. To address this issue, CERT-In has provided a temporary workaround involving manual file deletion in the Windows system directory. However, users are strongly advised to monitor updates from CrowdStrike closely for a more permanent solution.

Follow the Guidelines Issued by CERT-In:

* Boot Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment
* Navigate to the C: Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory
* Locate the file matching "C-00000291*-sys", and delete it.
* Boot the host normally.

Also, users are advised to check the latest updates from the Crowd Strike portal.