How to fix the Blue Screen of Death on your Windows PC affected by the CrowdStrike outage

July 21, 2024

A Microsoft outage that began Thursday night crippled airlines, financial, healthcare and energy companies around the world, leaving many with a “blue screen” on their work computers. In response, Microsoft on Saturday released a recovery tool to repair Windows machines affected by the flaw, a day after CrowdStrike provided instructions on how to repair a crashed PC.

CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company whose software protects small and large businesses from cyberattacks and other online threats, said it caused the outage when it sent out a software update with a bug that crashed Windows computers running the company’s software. The bug does not affect Mac and Linux computers. “We understand the seriousness of the situation and deeply apologize for the inconvenience and disruption,” the company said in a statement.

The consequences were massive. Travelers were stranded at the airport. Hospital appointments were postponed or canceled. And employees were unable to work – all because of this software update that caused the infamous blue screen of death on Windows PCs with the CrowdStrike bug.

While most people will just have to wait for the problem to be resolved, if you are on the other side of the issue and are the one struggling with the Blue Screen of Death on your PC, there is a solution for you that CrowdStrike themselves have published on their website.

Bluescreen of death — If you see this, it means your system has crashed.

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How to fix your Microsoft Windows PC affected by the CrowdStrike bug

Microsoft released a USB tool on its Microsoft Download Center on Saturday to help IT administrators make the repair. The tool requires administrative privileges and a BitLocker recovery key for each Windows PC. Microsoft also released recovery steps to fix PCs that keep rebooting due to the faulty CrowdStrike update.

On Friday, CrowdStrike said it had identified the issue and deployed a fix. “We direct our customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide full and continuous updates on our website.”

The first thing you should try to fix the Blue Screen of Death is Restart your Windows computer until the CrowdStrike fix is available.. George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, appeared on NBC’s “Today” show on Friday and said, “Many of our customers are rebooting the system and it’s back up and running because we fixed it on our side.”

This has actually worked for many people. This user on X had success after restarting his computer several times. Microsoft also said they have received feedback that multiple restarts (up to 15) were effective.

However, if you continue to have problems after rebooting, CrowdStrike recommends Boot into Safe Mode and then delete the corrupted file. On the CrowdStrike website, the company lists the following details:

Start your Windows computer in Safe Mode or Windows Recovery Environment.
Navigate to the %WINDIR%\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory.
Find the file named “C-00000291*.sys” and delete it.
Restart the host normally.

note: Bitlocker encrypted hosts may require a recovery key.

If you are working with a public cloud or other virtual environment, CrowdStrike recommends a different fix, which you can read about on the company’s website.