With the entire world seemingly still trying to deal with what has quickly become the world’s biggest IT failure, Microsoft’s blue screen of death has been introduced to a new generation of users courtesy of the CrowdStrike update fiasco. But what is it, and how can you fix it? Microsoft has gone all IT Crowd and suggested that turning it off and on again 15 times is the answer.
What Is The Blue Screen Of Death?
Microsoft first introduced the blue screen of death, also known as BSOD, to users of Windows 3.0 way back in 1993. To be technical for a moment, the blue screen of death is more formally known as a stop error. It is pretty much what it sounds like: a critical error that has caused the Windows operating system to crash.
The blue screen of death problem “often indicates kernel-level conflicts or bugs,” Mike Walters, co-founder of Action1, said, “such bugs are particularly difficult to diagnose and fix because they operate at the deepest levels of the operating system, where detailed interactions with hardware occur.” However, these stop errors have also historically appeared due to problems with faulty memory or overheating issues, for example.
Microsoft changed the color of the blue screen of death to black for Windows 11 users in July 2021, although it reverted to the familiar blue by the end of that year.
CrowdStrike Update Victims Told To Turn It Off And On Again And Again And Again…
The blue screen of death is the effect, but a CrowdStrike update was the cause of the global IT outage. The official fix from CrowdStrike itself involves booting every machine into safe mode manually and rolling your sleeves up with the common line. My colleague Kate O’Flaherty has an excellent explainer to help with this. However, Microsoft has also entered the user support fray with an official solution for users of Azure virtual machines that have been impacted by the CrowdStrike bug.
Microsoft said that it had “noticed that some Azure VMs are successfully updating via the CrowdStrike Falcon agent after multiple manual Virtual Machine restarts.” Customers were advised to attempt to do so as follows:
- Using the Azure Portal – attempting ‘Restart’ on affected VMs
- Using the Azure CLI or Azure Shell
- Please note in some cases multiple reboots may be required.
“Multiple reboots should not normally be necessary unless there are additional underlying problems,” Walters warned, adding, “sometimes, if the system hasn’t been rebooted in years, the reboot can cause specific problems at startup. Other problems can arise with databases that may not work after startup due to an incorrect reboot.”
Dealing With Blue Screens Of Death Outside Of The CrowdStrike Drama
For anyone experiencing a blue screen of death stop error that isn’t related to the current CrowdStrike issue, Microsoft offers the following advice:
“These errors can be caused by both hardware and software issues. If you added new hardware to your PC before the Blue Screen error, shut down your PC, remove the hardware, and try restarting. If you’re having trouble restarting, you can start your PC in safe mode. You can also try getting the latest updates with Windows Update, help from other sources, or restoring Windows to an earlier point in time.”
