More BSOD Issues But My Laptop is Fixed

Yesterday my IT department reached out to me via chat and provided instructions on how to get my laptop back from the dead because of the CrowdStrike BSOD. I immediately responded that I knew what to do but did not have administrator access for my laptop. A minute or two later, the contact provided me with a new login with admin privileges and the corresponding password. I am keeping that information should I need it in the future.

I rebooted my laptop into safe mode and logged in using the new credentials. As it is the first time anyone has ever logged into the machine with that user name and password, Windows had to set up a number of things with a lot of restrictions because of running in safe mode. It took about 5 minutes to complete. Unfortunately I experienced a new set of issues to overcome.

I had hoped I could just go into the command-line tool to navigate to the directory with the offending file. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to load. I had to right-click on the Windows menu and bring up the File Explorer. I put in the explicit path in the navigation field and successfully entered the directory. Then I scrolled down to the "C-00000291 . . ." file and right clicked on the file name. One of the options in the menu is "Delete" and I clicked it. Then just to be sure, I emptied the Recycle Bin as I didn't want anything to try and recover that file. The final step was a reboot. Then my computer came up without issue.

I made sure to thank the IT person and let him know my computer revived from the dead and I could start working. He thanked me for the confirmation and moved off to another system to restore.

The fix for getting the CrowdStrike problem is actually fairly simple on paper. The problem comes from Microsoft Windows and how it is impossible to fix without having someone log into each individual machine to remove a single file. That further gets complicated by various configurations like safe mode not being able to send output to the monitor on a DisplayPort or a new user with administrator privileges logging into a machine for the first time. So when you wonder why Delta Airlines can't get their machines back up and running quickly so you can fly home from a vacation, hopefully my journey has provided you with some understanding.