It has literally not been a good day for every Windows PC on the planet, as a glitch in a CrowdStrike security update has left Windows computers in a blue screen of death, affecting businesses The problem is that

Normally, this would be due to individual user complaints, which would be resolved by going into system recovery However, the scope of this is very large, affecting airlines, banks, TV stations, and even emergency services Updates on this outage can be found on our live blog

This massive IT outage has hit many businesses around the world We have a list of businesses and public services that we can check to see if they have been affected

Fortunately, Mac and Linux users are not affected by this problem, so it's not *all* kinds of computers

The specifics of what caused this problem are a bit thin, but CrowdStrike and Microsoft It appears to be a one-two punch Early reports indicate that the former was caused by a security update that contained a bug that brought the system to a halt,

while the latter was caused by a security update that contained a bug that caused the system to shut down

Separately, Microsoft's service also went down due to an “Azure backend workload” that caused a “connection failure”

That's about it From a global perspective, this is going to take a while; CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz issued a statement on the matter saying, “This is not a cyber attack, and our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of our customers”

However, as The Verge's Tom Warren aptly points out here, the fix that CrowdStrike is rolling out requires that the machines be online, and given this situation, it is It's safe to say that's not possible

Besides, there is also the concern that this issue would require “a human to visit every machine and reboot every machine with a USB stick” So, please be extra nice to your IT administrators today!

However, there are three different workarounds, one published by CrowdStrike itself and one by Neowin If you find yourself in this situation, follow these steps

If any of these options do not work, please let us know in the comments!