Unless you’re on vacation isolated from the world, you’ve probably heard about what happened last Thursday due to a CrowdStrike update, with some 8.5 million Windows computers experiencing problems. blue screens. Many services and even games were unavailable for hours, causing panic and hysteria in many companies. Well, finally the problems were solved and the services are active again, but today Microsoft has launched CrowdStrike Recovery Tool to help users who are still having problems find a solution.
Last Thursday, a CrowdStrike update caused a massive crash of Windows systems. It was an automatic update installed remotely (as always, without user consent, we have often told you that Windows is a privacy trap). However, the solution to the problem cannot be deployed automatically either, it must be done PC by PC, so thousands of IT professionals will have to work overtime this week… fortunately, if this happened to you on your PC, the solution is quite simple and we explain it to you right now.
CrowdStrike Recovery Tool is available
As we said, Microsoft has launched an official tool to fix the problems caused by the automatic update of CrowdStrike, which allows corporate IT staff and home users to quickly recover computers affected by CrowdStrike. Of course, as we said before, on Thursday the problem was already fixed, but you have to follow a series of steps to do it and, of course, it is easier to use this tool and that’s it.
At the bottom of this article, you have linked the original Microsoft article where the download page is linked so you can download the recovery tool, but you can also download it directly from here. The procedure is simple: you will download a compressed ZIP file, so open it and unzip the files to a folder on your PC.
Then you just need to run the file MsftRecoveryToolForCSv2.ps1 (it’s actually a PowerShell script, not an EXE) and that’s it, the system will make the necessary adjustments to automatically stop having the problem (be careful, your PC will reboot once it’s done). That it’s a PowerShell script instead of an EXE is no coincidence, as it will make it easier for system administrators to deploy this solution via their domain controller to the company’s PCs.
There are more than 8.5 million PCs affected
Microsoft estimates that more than 8.5 million Windows computers worldwide have been affected by this CrowdStrike update, and has already created a dedicated service to help system administrators fix the problem. Additionally, the company has been working directly with CrowdStrike and other vendors like Google and Amazon to find the most efficient way to deploy a fix (though as we said on Thursday, the problem has been largely fixed, and we now have this new tool).
Incidentally, even though 8.5 million PCs represent only 1% of all Windows machines worldwide, large organizations have been affected, such as banks, the BBC, hospitals, and even 911 emergency services in many states across the United States.
For those who don’t know, CrowdStrike is a security solutions provider and an alternative to Microsoft’s Windows Defender. Since these types of programs run at the kernel level of the system, an error there means that a PC can stop booting and get stuck in an eternal BSOD cycle.
