Government in contact with Microsoft amid global Windows outage: Vaishnaw

MEITY on IT outage: Reacting to the global IT outage led by a "Blue Screen of Death" (BSOD) error in the Microsoft Windows system, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Information & Broadcasting and Railawya, has shared that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is in contact with the Microsoft regarding the global outage. 

On X.com, Vaishnaw wrote, “MEITY is in touch with Microsoft and its associates regarding the global outage. The reason for this outage has been identified and updates have been released to resolve the issue. CERT is issuing a technical advisory. NIC network is not affected.” 

Union Minister also confirmed that the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in unaffected by the mass IT outage. NIC is a premier government institution responsible for providing IT services and infrastructure to support e-governance. NIC develops, manages, and maintains numerous digital platforms and applications for various government departments, facilitating data exchange, online services, and secure communication across government bodies.

CERT issues advisory 

The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) has also issued a warning about the Windows outage, rating the issue as critical. 

“It has been reported that Windows hosts related to Crowd strike agent "Falcon Sensor" are facing outages and crashing due to a recent update received in the product. The concerned Windows hosts are experiencing a ‘Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)’ related to Falcon Sensor,” the response team notification noted.  

The notification has also informed the users that in the latest updates, all the changes have been reverted by the CrowdStrike team but is users are still facing the issue, they can follow the steps mentioned below: 

1. Restart your computer and access the boot options menu (usually by pressing F8, F11, or ESC).
2. Select "Safe Mode" or "Windows Recovery Environment".
3. Open File Explorer and navigate to `C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike`.
4. Locate and delete the file matching "C-00000291.sys".
5. Restart your computer as usual.
6. Check for Updates