I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street.
In case you haven't heard, a major security company (CrowdStrike) caused a massive IT outage today when they pushed a faulty update of their software. Everything from doctors' offices to airlines are having problems. It's all over the news. This may be the largest IT outage of all time.
Something like this is why I never have automatic updates set to ON for any critical software, including MS Office and Windows. I prefer to update manually. I generally do it once every six months. I don't update soon after a major release was pushed. This gives someone ELSE the chance to find the bugs.
I also start with the least important PC that I have and work my way up. I'll start with my travel laptop, then my training laptop, then my work PC, then my server. Hopefully any issues will show up on my travel laptop before I get to the server. LOL.
Disabling Office Update is easy. Just go to File - Account and you'll see the Office Update options there. Turn it off. Make yourself a calendar reminder to manually update every 6 months or so.
Windows is a little more difficult. You need a third-party tool (there are several available online; I haven't used any) or a simple Registry change. I'll be putting together a video on how to do this soon, but I'll post the instructions in the comments below if you'd like to do that today.
And of course, I can't stress this enough... backup... Backup... BACKUP... BACKUP!!! I have a regular nightly backup that copies all of my critical files to an external hard drive, and another copy offsite (Google Backup and Sync works just fine). I also make a manual image of my hard drives every 6 months or so. OK, who am I kidding... usually once a year. I'll be making a video on how to do this too.
And as far as third-party security software goes, for the average user, or even most SMBs (small-to-midized businesses) the Windows Defender (or Windows Security, whatever they're calling it these days) is just fine. Get rid of any extra virus scanning crap that might have come pre-installed on your PC when you bought it. It does nothing more than slow your system down. Just be careful where you download files from, and don't open anything other than known extensions (DOCX, XLSX, PDF, TXT, etc.)
If grandma suspiciously emails you a .EXE file, don't open it!
Yes, if you have any public-facing PCs then you should have extra security software on them. I use CloudFlare for my website (not to be confused with CloudStrike; they partner, but they're not the same company). CloudFlare is more about network security. They prevent things like DDOS attacks and stuff like that. I can also block traffic based on IP address, geolocation, and much more. For public-facing systems (web and database servers, for example) this is generally recommended. But for your internal office PCs or home machines, nah.
OK. That's all for today folks. I welcome your comments below if you have any additional knowledge to add to the conversation. I'll be putting together a video on this when I get back on Monday.
Cool stuff like this always seems to happen when I'm travelling. LOL
Here's a step-by-step guide to disable automatic updates in Windows 11:
If you're not familiar with editing the Registry, do not attempt this. You can mess up your PC if you don't do it right. And of course, BACKUP first.
Open Registry Editor:
Press Win + R to open the Run dialog.
Type regedit and press Enter.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows.
Create the WindowsUpdate Key if it doesn't exist:
Right-click on the Windows key in the left pane.
Select New > Key.
Name the new key WindowsUpdate.
Create the AU Key if it doesn't exist:
Right-click on the WindowsUpdate key.
Select New > Key.
Name the new key AU.
Create the NoAutoUpdate DWORD if it doesn't exist:
Right-click on the AU key.
Select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.
Name it NoAutoUpdate.
Set the Value of NoAutoUpdate:
Double-click on NoAutoUpdate.
Set the value data to 1.
Click OK.
This will disable automatic updates on Windows 11. If you need to re-enable updates in the future, you can delete the NoAutoUpdate DWORD or set its value to 0.
Make yourself a notification on your calendar to update your system once every 6 months or so you get regular security and performance updates.
Oh, and one other issue that I just thought of underscores why it's important for businesses to have a local copy of their database information in case their online provider has a problem like this. That's another benefit to running your database locally with either just an Access database or Access with a local SQL Server because you have all of your own data in-house and you won't be as affected by an online shutdown.
If you're using something like Salesforce and they have an outage, you're out of business, you're down. So that's why keeping your data local and keeping your operations in-house is a plus. Yes, I have a lot of my data online on my website, but it's all copied down to my local server. So in case something happens on my website, I still have all my data.
That happened before when I was with GoDaddy; they literally shut down my website with no warning, and I had to move to a different provider. Fortunately, I have a nightly backup where I copy everything locally, but there's something to be said for having a local database in your office instead of having everything online. You don't have to go to paper and pencil if your website's down or if your database server is down.
Always think about redundancy.
Kevin Yip
@Reply 2 years ago
These disruptions are part of the online life that we are ALL living in. Even if one company had an outage, it could still affect us all due to the interconnected nature of our Internet ecosystem. If Amazon went down, a whole host of industries, from retail, entertainment to web-hosting, etc., would be affected -- let alone a problem like the current one, one that affects many companies that use Crowdstrike's Falcon software (the security software that is the cause of all this).
From reading online posts of users affected by this, all it takes to fix this is reboot the machine to safe mode and delete a file matching C-00000291*.sys. THAT is how little it takes, just a single defective file, to cause this worldwide outage. Again, it is our interconnectiveness that is the root cause of this, no matter how small or big the error.
Richard, it's like the outages you've had from your video-hosting or web-hosting companies. This kind of thing is such a part of online life nowadays that it's unavoidable.
I would also not install critical updates right away, but I probably wouldn't wait six months to do so. If it's a monthly update, I would probably install it mid-month.
Kevin Yip
@Reply 2 years ago
To your other point about having a locally installed system, again, our "interconnectedness" makes us vulnerable to outages *anywhere*, anytime. In sthe mid 1990s, our company (and industry) already started transmitting business data electronically via various networking system. If any of the endpoints had an outage, we couldn't transmit and couldn't do our jobs, and it wouldn't matter whether we had local data or not.
Leaked footage of the CrowdStrike IT team trying to figure out what happened.
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 2 years ago
I haven't read all the posts here and I will probably agree with most of them once I do. I was sitting by the pool at my resort yesterday trying to do a stock sale. I couldn't, so I just went back to the margarita. Today I woke up to the news about the Crowdstrike outage. I wasn't surprised. You see, 50 years ago I was a hostage to timeshare computing, to some IT tyrant that I could only communicate with by phone. If he decided to answer.
Later, I was able to buy a mini-computer for $50,000 and do my own programming without being a hostage to unscheduled maintenance and payment demands. In a few years, I was so happy to get my first IBM PC so that I could get off the maintenance contract of that mini-computer, which was $1,300 every month. However, here we are again.40 years later and still hostage to IT guys with their automatic updates. Yes, I never allow an automatic update, but I have noticed that many updates do so without asking for my permission. Imagine what happens in remote servers that you will never see or touch.
Separate your data and O/S partitions. Practice until you can roll back the O/S and application software partition, without touching the data partition and without needing a Windows boot first. Never trust your business to the guys in the "cloud".
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 2 years ago
@Kevin Y. Have you found a way to boot into safe mode on every Windows 10 or 11 computer without resorting to a USB or other bootable partition? Last time I looked into it, the only way to boot Windows 10 or 11 into safe mode natively was from within a running Windows itself. I don't remember which was the last version of Windows where F8 worked for this. I've also found that USB recovery methods don't always work, especially when a variety of PCs are involved.
Kevin Yip
@Reply 2 years ago
There is no way to cold boot into safe mode in Windows 10 without using boot media. If the PC has startup problems, it may automatically give you the option to enter safe mode (see picture below). But if the PC is so damaged that it can't boot at all, then obviously it can't get into safe mode no matter what.
Kevin Yip
@Reply 2 years ago
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 2 years ago
@ Kevin Y. I've gotten that recovery screen after SEVERAL attempts to boot. And sometimes not. Depending on the BIOS, it's sometimes pretty difficult to get a USB to boot too.
Sandra Truax
@Reply 2 years ago
Thanks for the info. I have disabled my auto updates.
Kevin Yip
@Reply 2 years ago
Hi Thomas, the PC may be unrecoverable (unbootable) if that keeps happening. I've seen it before: boot to blue screen, choose safe boot, boot to blue screen again, etc.
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 2 years ago
@ Kevin Y. It's been a while, since I've only been working on my computers recently (not client's). Maybe a few dozen times over the years I've tried the recovery features in Windows boot media to fix a "smashed" hard disk. I can't remember it ever working.
Kevin Yip
@Reply 2 years ago
On one of my old PCs, I had to enable "legacy USB support" in the motherboard BIOS in order to boot the PC up from an external USB drive.
Once, after I installed a faulty Realtek audio driver, my PC booted to a blue screen. I had to disable audio in the motherboard BIOS, which then allowed me to boot normally and uninstall the faulty driver.
I read Kevin R.'s article. Strange. One source I read said Crowdstrike "protects" 30,000 Windows PCs. While the linked article claims the Crowdstrike problem crashed somewhere around 8.5 million Windows PCs. Now how did that happen? Was the Crowdstrike software embedded and updated in Windows by Microsoft without an individual having a Crowdstrike account?
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