Thousands of Windows computers are experiencing a blue screen of death at startup. Hundreds of companies around the world have faced the problem. According to The Verge, the problem is caused by an erroneous update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike.
According to Bloomberg, banks, the London Stock Exchange, airlines such as Delta, United, and American Airlines, airports in Tokyo, London, and Berlin, news channels such as Sky News, and many others are reporting problems around the world.
Due to the latest update, CrowdStrike disables affected computers and servers and puts them into a recovery cycle, which causes them to fail to start properly and display a blue screen of death.
“We have widespread reports of BSODs on Windows hosts, occurring on multiple sensor versions,” CrowdStrike wrote in a statement.
The company noted that it has already found the problem and is rolling out an update, but so far it has not helped all affected devices.
Users on Reddit report one possible workaround, which requires starting the devices in Safe Mode, navigating to the CrowdStrike directory, and renaming the c:\windows\system32\drivers\crowstrike system files to something else.