What’s this Crowdstrike bug ?

CrowdStrike’s update fail resulted in outages and travel chaos worldwide. Know how to fix your blue screen yourself .

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Carla Smith

7/19/20241 min read

A malfunctioning update from the antivirus company CrowdStrike has caused numerous Windows PCs to experience the Blue Screen of Death. Thankfully, there is a way to resolve the issue, although it requires several steps. If you discovered your Windows PC displaying a Blue Screen of Death on Friday morning, you are not alone. A bug in the antivirus software from CrowdStrike has incapacitated many Windows systems. The silver lining is that there is a fix available, though it involves some effort. CrowdStrike identified the problem as stemming from a problematic update that was deployed to Windows machines, including servers. The fortunate part is that the issue can be resolved by deleting a specific file within the CrowdStrike software. The main difficulty lies in the fact that the affected Windows PCs are booting directly into the error state, making file modifications impossible. However, there is a solution: According to a support document from CrowdStrike, affected users should start their Windows PC in Safe Mode, a diagnostic mode from Microsoft designed for troubleshooting. You can enter Safe Mode from the Blue Screen of Death by selecting the advanced repair options button if the PC is already in the Recovery environment. Alternatively, you can restart the PC and press the F8 key before the system reaches the Windows screen. In either scenario, you should see a blue troubleshooting screen. From there, navigate to "Advanced options" and select the option to boot in various safe modes. CrowdStrike recommends choosing Safe Mode with Networking. This should allow your PC to restart without encountering the Blue Screen of Death, as Windows will only use a minimal set of files, avoiding the problematic CrowdStrike bug. Next, use File Explorer to go to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory, locate the file named C-00000291*.sys, and delete it. Restart your computer, and the issue should be resolved permanently.