Garmin Pulls A CrowdStrike, Turns Smartwatches Into Fancy Bracelets

Garmin has experienced its very own CrowdStrike incident after owners of the company's smartwatches complained the faces were showing a blue triangle of death following a seemingly faulty update.

IT professionals who lived through the CrowdStrike fiasco in July will remember the blue screens that lit up offices worldwide when a broken update sent Windows into a crashing boot loop.

It appears Garmin managed to do the same and pushed out an update that has downed many users' smartwatches. Some reported a blue triangle on their watch's display, while others couldn't get past the startup screen.

Garmin has remained tight-lipped about the cause of the trouble, posting only a support page with a list of affected devices and instructions for resetting or resynchronizing the device.

The old IT standby of "Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?" has found little favor with end users whose fitness trackers have turned into expensive bracelets. The gnashing of teeth from obsessive stat counters could be heard from around the world.

Sleuths on social media pointed the finger at an update file distributed by Garmin that caused affected smartwatches to crash, with many displaying that blue triangle.

According to Redditors, Garmin has since pulled the affected file. However, some smartwatches might have already copied it and are ready for installation. It is possible to remove the invalid update file by connecting to a computer and deleting it, but this procedure might be beyond users who bought a fitness tracker expecting it to "just work."

The Register contacted Garmin to confirm the findings reported on social media and asked if the company would replace devices of users who could not follow the fix's instructions or for whom the fix did not work.

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A response from Garmin stated: "We will aim to get back to all press and media inquiries within five working days."

The glitch is not a good look for Garmin, whose technology extends beyond smartwatches into places such as aircraft cockpits. Social media users expressed disappointment with how the company handled the incident. One thundered: "This is textbook on how to ruin a company's reputation and potentially lose thousands of customers."

If the results of the sleuthing are correct, and it was indeed a broken update file that caused the blue triangle of death to appear on so many smartwatches, then the lessons of the CrowdStrike calamity clearly fell on deaf ears within Garmin's smartwatch division. ®