Yesterday was an interesting day indeed. Microsoft pushed an update that bricked billions of Windows computers around the world. Many important businesses, including airports, hospitals, and thousands of companies, were affected!
The issue, as I understand it, comes from a cybersecurity company "CrowdStrike" pushing an update to their drivers. Microsoft pushed that update to all Windows devices around the world, and turns out, the update had a faulty code in it that prevented Windows from booting up.
The fix is simple, (considering the outage's scope at least,) you just have to boot in Windows Safe Mode and delete the bad file causing the issue. The problem is that this must be done manually. Many companies don't give their employees access to the safe mode, and even in the ones they do, many people aren't technically savvy enough to fix their PCs by themselves.
It's hilarious and sad at the same time!!
Consider the irony of this! A worldwide Windows outage being caused by a security patch designed to prevent hackers from accessing your PC, is doing worse to you than any hackers would do.
I don't know if this is a planned thing or a mistake. I'd say it's probably a mistake, because there's nothing to gain from doing something like this on purpose except maybe sitting there as you watch the world panic for a few hours.
This disaster makes one realize how fragile our modern world is... Because of this mistake, many flights were delayed, and many businesses stopped operating for at least one day. Probably more than a few days, I assume... Watching a bunch of videos about the topic, the comments on them made me realize some companies will take time to recover from this...
Interestingly, I didn't experience any of this first-hand. Since I switched to Linux 2 years ago, I didn't use a Windows PC when this happened. The people close to me who use Windows didn't have it open during the security update. I'm glad I wasn't affected, though.
Things like these don't make going back to Windows any more attractive... What do you think?
These were my (hopefully not very) jumbled thoughts about the Windows outage one day later... Part of me enjoyed witnessing this historical moment, and the other part got more jaded about modern life.
Were you affected by this? Tell me about your experience.~