A faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike is knocking affected PCs and servers offline, forcing them into a recovery boot loop so machines can’t start properly. CrowdStrike is widely used by many businesses worldwide to manage the security of Windows PCs and servers.

Australian banks, airlines, and TV broadcasters first raised the alarm as thousands of machines started to go offline. The issues spread fast as businesses based in Europe started their work day.

UK broadcaster Sky News could not broadcast its morning news bulletins for hours this morning and showed a message apologizing for “the interruption to this broadcast.” Ryanair, one of the biggest airlines in Europe, also says it’s experiencing a “third-party” IT issue, impacting flight departures.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says it’s assisting airlines like Delta, United, and American Airlines due to communications issues. “The FAA is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at US airlines,” says FAA spokesperson Jeannie Shiffer in a statement to The Verge. “Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops for their fleets until the issue is resolved.”

Berlin airport also warns of travel delays due to “technical issues.” The issues have also impacted many 911 emergency call centers in Alaska. One airline in India has even turned to handwritten boarding passes due to the outages.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” says CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz in a post on X. “Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.”

CrowdStrike says the issue has been identified, and a fix has been deployed, but fixing these machines won’t be simple for IT admins. The root cause appears to be an update to the kernel-level driver that CrowdStrike uses to secure Windows machines.

While CrowdStrike identified the issue and reverted the faulty update after “widespread reports of BSODs on Windows hosts,” it doesn’t appear to help machines that have already been impacted.

In a Reddit thread, hundreds of IT admins are reporting widespread issues. The workaround involves booting affected Windows machines into safe mode, navigating to the CrowdStrike directory, and deleting a system file. That will be troublesome on some cloud-based servers or even for Windows laptops deployed and used remotely.

“Our entire company is offline,” says one Reddit poster, while another says 70 percent of their laptops are down and stuck in a boot loop. “Happy Friday,” says one Reddit poster. It looks like IT admins worldwide will have a long day.

In what appears to be a separate outage, Microsoft is also recovering from several issues with its Microsoft 365 apps and services. The root cause of those issues was “a configuration change in a portion of our Azure backend workloads.”

Two whole years of virtual events will pave the way for Ignite 2022 this year. This special event for developers and IT admins will take place in the company’s hometown of Seattle at the Seattle Convention Center from October 12 to 14.

All this has been confirmed by the software titan, with reports hinting that some big things are in store when it comes to Microsoft products.

But before we get to that, here is the official bulletin:

Guess what’s back, back again.
Mark your calendars for an all-new, reimagined #MSIgnite! Explore the latest innovations, learn from product experts and partners, level up your skillset, and create connections from around the world.
Learn more : https://t.co/hHgaEFwzEx pic.twitter.com/FRMnwD9YZd

— Microsoft Ignite (@MS_Ignite) July 27, 2022

For now, there is no information on how Microsoft plans to ensure everyone’s safety or if it requires vaccination for attendees. The same goes for the social distancing or mask policy in play at the event, which remains unclear.

Although the Redmond-based company is ready to resume large in-person events again, it says space will be limited. For this very reason, there is still a digital option, which will be free.

As in the years past, before COVID-19 ravaged the world as we knew it, Microsoft says that those who will physically attend the event will have smaller interactive in-person learning and connection opportunities with technology leaders, influences, and more.

The cost of an in-person event will also depend on the experience you choose. The company promises to share more details about this in later August. Expect limited passes for these activities.

That’s not all, though.

In addition to the central Seattle location, Microsoft is also planning to hold spotlights in multiple countries, including France, Germany, Japan, Latin America, and the UK. These smaller events will discuss the news and announcements from Keynote and Core Themes, along with market-specific discussions.

In the meantime, this newly updated FAQ about the upcoming Ignite IT conference should answer any further questions you have regarding the anticipated event.

Microsoft will open registrations for both in-person and digital attendance in late August. The company recommends that you register as soon as possible before the commencement date of October 12, 2022.

You can sign up now for updates on Ignite registration.

If you are one, you will be pleased to know about this welcome new addition.

As announced, Redmond has released a new software update page in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. This page is designed to give you a unified high-level overview of your installed Windows and Office software.

This page of the dashboard provides a quick overview of the update status and health of your software installations.

This panel provides system administrators with many metrics, including information about how many devices on their fleet have deployed the latest security updates for Microsoft 365 apps and a breakdown of the security vulnerabilities found.

The number of machines on the network running unsupported versions of Windows, alongside details about PCs with OS versions that are about to reach the end of servicing, is also provided.

You know, all the good stuff under one umbrella.

The feature was initially slated for release in April 2022 but has just reached preview just now.

While, as of today, the software updates webpage only provides details regarding Microsoft 365 apps and Windows, the company will expand it later this year to include on-premises Exchange Servers, too.

Exchange Server 2019 is also slated to get a similar experience early next year.

Obviously, since this new software updates dashboard is still in the preview stage, it is logical to expect some rough edges here and there. Besides, it is fed by best-effort diagnostic data, so the counts themselves could be off, not to mention the latency in updating the numbers.

Nevertheless, if you would still like to try it, you can check out the dedicated help pages available here and here.

But not everyone is okay with this strategy — certainly not IT admins.

The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back was Quick Assist.

For those of you outside of the loop, Quick Assist is the in-house remote assistance app that Microsoft has developed for its platform. This is a very handy tool, and very much in use by system administrators who appreciate its flexibility and ease of use.

Last month, the software titan released a new and updated Quick Assist app, complete with a new logo below, and took the opportunity to move it to the Microsoft Store.

The transition was finalized yesterday, meaning Quick Assist is no longer available as a native Windows 11 and Windows 10 application. If you open the tool in Windows today, you will be greeted with a message that you need to get the latest version by May 23, 2022, for a more secure experience.

But as reported, the store version of the Quick Assist tool is coming under fire by IT admins on social media for a variety of different reasons.

As Matthias Waltniel, a Microsoft Endpoint Management Consultant, put it:

Quick Assist was a great product, but this new version has some challenges:
– Requires local admin permissions during install
– Installs next to the previous version
– Cannot start "elevated" as admin

Will the previous version really stop working on 16th of May?

— Matthias Waltniel (@MWaltniel) May 10, 2022

The gist of the matter is that the app has several bugs and issues that are proving annoying.

Trouble arises because key features like the native keyboard shortcut to trigger it no longer work. Plus, it has become impossible to mass deploy the app to all machines.

Some are even lamenting the fact that the new version of the app needs local admin privileges to be installed. And then there is a case where the store version of Quick Assist installs next to the previous version of the program.

This Tech Community post is where IT admins are venting their frustration. Most of this seems to be code debt, as in features that were left out in the transition from native to the Microsoft Store.

Redmond seems to be aware of these complaints and even has a support page for these issues. Company employees in the Tech Community thread are providing workarounds for IT admins like using an offline version and pinning the store version to the taskbar.

This is certainly a big change, and not everyone has adapted well to it.