Microsoft outage: CERT-In issues advisory, shares fix for blue screen error

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-In, has issued an advisory concerning the Microsoft outage. It said the downtime was due to a Crowdstrike update and rated its severity as "critical."

CrowdStrike, a provider of software updates and patches for Windows PCs and Microsoft products, had released the latest update for Falcon Sensor. However, stability issues in the update have resulted in outages and system crashes.

Falcon sensors are used in business computers to collect security data.

"It has been reported that Windows hosts related to Crowdstrike agent 'Falcon Sensor' are facing outages and getting crashed due to recent update received in the product. The concerned Windows hosts are experiencing a 'Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)' related to Falcon Sensor," the CERT-In advisory said.

Microsoft outage: How to fix blue screen error

While the CrowdStrike has already reverted the latest update, if systems are still crashing and unable to stay online to receive the channel file changes, the users can take these measures:

• Boot Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment
• Navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory
• Locate the file matching C-00000291*.sys and delete it
• Boot the host normally

Globally, services of the London Stock Exchange, Visa, Amazon, and Delta Airlines, among others, have also been affected.

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the information technology ministry is in touch with Microsoft regarding the global outage. He also said the National Informatics Centre (NIC) network is unaffected.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the IT minister said the cause of the outage had been identified, and updates were rolled out to resolve the issue.

Meanwhile, India's stock exchanges, NSE and BSE, said they were not impacted due to the Microsoft outage.