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National IT outage hits local surgeries and some businesses
19/07/2024
Some surgeries can’t book appointments or issue prescriptions
A huge IT outage is hitting systems around the world. Businesses using Microsoft software have faced a system failure screen – commonly known as the “blue screen of death”.
A number of GP surgeries locally have been affected with these surgeries saying they are unable to access their systems. This has left them unable to book appointments or issue prescriptions:
- Woodlands Surgery
- Bloxham and Hook Norton Surgeries
- Springfield Surgery
- Byfield Surgery
- Cropredy Surgery
- Banbury Cross Health Centre
- Fenny Compton
- Shenington
Woodlands Surgery posted a message saying: “Our Clinical IT system is down, which means we are unable to book appointments, or prescribe medications, or any of our usual workload.
“Due to this we’ve turned our phones over to our emergency closure message – unfortunately without our IT systems working we are unable to help you when you call us.
“This is a national problem and we know our Clinical System owners are working hard to get it back up and running again.”
A number of local shops and supermarkets are saying they can only accept cash as they have no way of taking card payments.
Nationally Sky News was taken off air, airports have struggled with check-in systems and some banking systems are down.
The cause of the problem has been confirmed as being a software update on Microsoft systems by the company CrowdStrike. They have issued a statement saying: “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.
“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website.
“We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels.
“Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.”
For those who have the “blue screen of death” and a dead system the following technical steps are understood to fix the problem:
- Boot Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment
- Navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory
- Locate the file matching “C-00000291*.sys”, and delete it.
- Boot the host normally.
Published: by Banbury FM Newsteam