Summary
Windowscomputers all over the world are being affected by a major IT outage, causing them to shut down and display the infamous “Blue Screen of Death.” There are few sights as unsettling for PC owners as the Blue Screen of Death, an error screen that appears whenever aWindowscomputer suffers from a technical issue that has crashed its system. The reasons and solutions for these crashes vary from relatively minor freeze-ups that are fixed by a simple reboot to much more severe problems.
An example of the latter has been cropping up across the globe over the past day or so, causing Windows systems to crash and display thedreaded Blue Screen of Death error message. Airports were reportedly forced to cancel flights, banks and businesses were negatively impacted, jail cameras and arrest processing software were taken offline, and TV stations were even temporarily taken off the air due to systems locking up and being forced to reboot in Recovery mode.
As reported byIGNand other news outlets, the source of this mass outage has since been identified as a defect in software from Crowdstrike, a Texas-based cybersecurity technology company that provides cloud workload protection and cyberattack response services to a range of companies around the world. It is believed to have been caused by a glitch ina recent Windows update. Crowdstrike soon addressed the situation, reassuring the public that it was not the work of a security incident or cyberattack. The glitch that caused these outages has now been identified, though it will still take some time to fix it completely.
Glitch in Cybersecurity Software Causes Windows Shutdowns Across the Globe
In the meantime, Windows users who have been impacted by the issue have taken to social media to express the sinking feeling of losing hours of work due to a Blue Screen of Death at the worst possible moment, as well as make light of the situation throughmemes referencingResident Evil, the classic “have you tried turning it off and on again” scene fromThe IT Crowd, and even the old Microsoft helper mascot Clippy.
Thankfully, it doesn’t look like anyone was injured due to technical issues caused by this latest outage affectingWindows computers and systems, but it has certainly caused no shortage of headaches for banks, airlines, television stations, and other services. Anyone impacted by this Crowstrike issue can work around the crash by restarting theirWindowscomputer in Safe Mode, going into the Crowdstrike Systems folder, and deleting a certain file before booting up normally.
