of A major global technology outage The incident, which occurred on Friday due to an error in an update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, may now have largely faded from public memory, thanks to the swift action of IT administrators and departments around the world to fix the problem that crippled Windows-based networks at many airlines, hospitals and banks.
But while all may be well for consumers, IT departments are actually still trying to get their own computers back up and running. As Mashable previously reported, the flawed update released by CrowdStrike requires technical fixes and direct access to each individual affected device, so for larger organizations, this could take a while.
But now IT departments have an easier way to Recently released fixes from Microsoft.
Microsoft’s CrowdStrike recovery tool
CrowdStrike issued an updated fix shortly after the flawed version was released, but for many computers that automatically installed the update, it was too late. Fixes It became a manual process of booting the computer into safe mode to avoid the Windows “blue screen” and then deleting the update files.
This might be a bit technical for the average Windows user, but it’s not an issue for IT professionals. The problem, however, is that it’s a lengthy process. Boot into Safe Mode. Find the update file. Delete it. Repeat. You’ll need to do this for each individual affected machine.
Mashable Lightspeed
A fix from Microsoft released over the weekend sped things up considerably — yes, the fix still requires manual work on each computer — but the tedious process has been automated.
Microsoft’s recovery tool uses a bootable USB drive that logs into a lightweight version of Windows called Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE), and from there, it automatically removes the CrowdStrike update files that are causing the problem on affected computers.
As The Verge He points out that this “saves time because the tool only accesses the disk without booting into Safe Mode or needing administrative privileges on the machine, as it doesn’t boot into a local copy of Windows.”
Although a third party was held responsible, the only devices affected were computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system, so Microsoft likely felt compelled to take action to help the large number of affected customers.
Microsoft also DETAILED STEPS How to fix CrowdStrike issues on different versions of Windows computers, including details about the USB tool.
