this Massive global technological disruption What happened Friday due to a bug in an update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike may have been largely ignored by the public today. That’s thanks to IT administrators and departments around the world who took quick action to resolve an issue that brought down Windows-based networks at many airlines, hospitals and banks.
However, while things may be fine for consumers, IT staff are actually still dealing with getting the company’s computers back up and running. As Mashable previously reported, the faulty CrowdStrike update required a technical fix and direct access to each affected device. So for large organizations, this is going to take a while.
But IT now gets major help thanks to simpler ways Microsoft recently released a fix.
Microsoft’s CrowdStrike Recovery Tool
CrowdStrike released an updated fix shortly after the problematic version was released, but it was too late for many computers that automatically installed the update. After installation repair Becomes a manual process that involves booting the computer in Safe Mode to bypass the Windows “Blue Screen of Death” and then deleting the update archive.
While this may seem a bit technical to the average Windows user, it won’t be a problem for IT professionals. But the problem is, it’s a time-consuming process: booting into safe mode. Update files found. delete. repeat. This must be done for each affected machine.
Mix and match speed of light
A fix released by Microsoft over the weekend speeds things up considerably. Yes, the fix still requires manual work on each computer. However, the more tedious process is automated.
Microsoft’s recovery tool uses a bootable USB drive that logs into a lightweight version of Windows (called Windows Preinstallation Environment, or Windows PE). It then automatically deletes the CrowdStrike update files that are causing the problem on the affected computers.
as edge noted that this saves time because it “avoids the requirement to boot into Safe Mode or administrator rights on the computer because the tool simply accesses the disk without booting into a native copy of Windows.”
Although a third party was responsible, the only affected devices were computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system. Therefore, it seems that Microsoft feels the need to take action to help many affected customers.
Microsoft also provides detailed steps Fixes CrowdStrike issues on various versions of Windows computers, including USB tool details.
