Microsoft outage: CrowdStrike CEO warns a fix could take a while

Much of the world woke up Friday discovering much of the internet wasn't working due to an outage caused by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. And, unfortunately, it doesn't appear like the problems will be totally fixed for quite some time.

Now, if it's just your personal Windows computer that's affected, there appears to be a workaround. The CrowdStrike issue caused many Windows computers to display the Blue Screen of Death but announced a fix around 2:30 a.m. ET. Mashable has the full coverage and steps but effectively you have to delete a file and reboot.

That workaround aside, global issues still persist. Think of how complicated it may be to individually fix the countless machines and services that use Crowdstrike. Everything from airlines, to banks, to emergency services, to healthcare providers, to grocery stores were down or disrupted. Unfortunately, the problems might not go away soon.

Tweet may have been deleted

Wrote Mashable Senior Editor Stan Schroeder:

"While the issue has been 'identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed,' per CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz, actually fixing it is not always trivial. This is not a simple update which can easily be deployed to all systems over-the-air, as many of the affected systems crash right after booting up, meaning they're in an endless boot loop. This, in turn, means that the fix must be applied manually...to each affected system, and in large companies, this can take many hours."

Kurtz later admitted in an interview with TODAYthat a complete recovery from the issue would take a while.

• CrowdStrike, Microsoft break silence on the Windows outage disrupting the world
• Microsoft outage: What is CrowdStrike and why users are getting Windows blue screens
• Which banks were affected by the Microsoft outage? What we know.
• CrowdStrike announces Microsoft outage workaround. How to deal with the Blue Screen of Death.
• Microsoft outage updates: CrowdStrike issue still wreaking havoc despite fix

"It could be some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover," he said.

So, uhh, buckle up for a Friday with lots of services down.