When Everything Was “Working”… Until It Wasn’t
At 8:42 a.m., the tickets started coming in. Microsoft Word crashed again. Teams calls dropped without warning. Citrix sessions failed to launch for users who had logged in successfully just minutes earlier.
By mid‑morning, IT teams across the globe were troubleshooting in parallel, each assuming the same thing: this must be something unique to our environment.
It wasn’t.
Behind the scenes, a very different story was unfolding. It was one that spanned hundreds of organizations, thousands of endpoints, and tens of thousands of crashes per day. No major outage banner. No immediate vendor advisory. Just a growing operational storm hiding in plain sight.
This is the reality of modern IT: issues don’t announce themselves anymore. They emerge quietly, scale rapidly, and surface everywhere at once. And that’s exactly why the ControlUp Innovation Guild created Global DEX Findings.
What Are ControlUp Global DEX Findings?
Global DEX Findings are curated incident reports derived from aggregated, anonymized telemetry across ControlUp-monitored environments worldwide. Each finding highlights a recurring or abnormal pattern. Most often, it’s application or service crashes that appear consistently across multiple organizations.
Rather than relying on anecdotal reports or isolated troubleshooting, Findings are built on:
- Global crash rate anomaly detection
- Cross organization correlation
- Version-specific and process level analysis
- Real-world impact observed at scale
Each finding provides IT teams with the context they need to act fast.
Real-world Examples of Findings in Action
After our recent announcement of Global DEX Findings, we wanted to share several examples of the importance and impact this brings to IT teams. The following are three sizeable incidents that ControlUp detected before problems were widely identified, reported, and understood.
A Global Microsoft Word Regression Seen Before the World Knew
One of the most striking examples was a major, global surge in Microsoft Word crashes. It was isolated to a specific build: 16.0.19029.20244.
ControlUp telemetry showed a sharp rise in crashes. These crashes rose from a steady baseline to nearly 30,000 per day. The issue impacted over 500 organizations and more than 15,000 devices worldwide.
At the time:
- There was no prominent Microsoft advisory
- Public references were sparse and fragmented
- Many IT teams were troubleshooting locally, unaware of the global scope
The finding gave organizations immediate validation that they were seeing a widespread regression, not a local misconfiguration allowing them to prepare for and accelerate upgrades once fixed builds became available.
Citrix Workspace Client Crashes That Disrupted Access
Another finding identified recurring crashes in the Citrix Workspace client (wfica32.exe) tied to a specific version.
While fewer organizations were impacted, the business impact was significant:
- Failed session launches
- Unexpected disconnections
- Increased helpdesk volume in Citrix-dependent environments
ControlUp’s data showed a consistent crash signature across environments, strongly suggesting a version-specific regression rather than environmental causes. That visibility helped teams avoid wider rollouts and aligned with later vendor actions on the affected build.
Zoom + AMD Radeon: A Dependency No One Was Watching
In another case, ControlUp Findings surfaced a widespread crash pattern involving Zoom.exe interacting with AMD Radeon graphics drivers.
The signal was clear:
- The fault pointed to a graphics driver module
- The crashes appeared across many unrelated organizations
- Upgrading Zoom to version 6.5 or higher eliminated the issue entirely
At the time, this fix was not broadly documented, leaving many teams stuck in trial-and-error troubleshooting. Findings turned a hidden dependency into a clear resolution.
When Background Services Break Collaboration
Some of the most disruptive incidents don’t come from the apps users see but from the services they don’t.
High-severity crashes in legacyhost.exe on systems running HP Poly Lens caused widespread instability in Microsoft Teams and Zoom across 150+ organizations.
The result:
- Audio and video devices failing to initialize
- Users dropping from meetings
- Inability to reliably join calls
Because Poly Lens operates as a background device management layer, a single failing process impacted multiple collaboration platforms at once. This is a classic example of indirect dependencies with outsized consequences.
Silent Failures in Endpoint Management
Not all impact is immediately visible. ControlUp telemetry also revealed a dramatic spike in crashes tied to specific versions of the Intune Management Extension (IME), with daily crash volumes increasing nearly tenfold across hundreds of organizations.
Since IME handles:
- Application deployments
- PowerShell execution
- Proactive remediations
These crashes created a silent risk: endpoints that looked healthy but failed to execute critical management tasks.
Without shared visibility, these issues can persist for weeks unnoticed.
Even Low-Severity Findings Matter at Scale
Findings aren’t limited to headline-level incidents. Recurring crashes in background components like ManageEngine Endpoint Central surfaced across multiple organizations, highlighting reliability risks in automation and management workflows.
While end-user impact was limited, these insights helped teams improve stability before small issues became big ones.
Impact for ControlUp Customers
Across all these examples, ControlUp Findings help customers:
- Confirm when issues are global, not local
- Reduce time to root cause
- Make safer rollout and rollback decisions
- Lower support ticket volume
- Communicate incidents with confidence and evidence
Instead of reacting in isolation, teams gain situational awareness powered by real data.
Impact on Vendors Like Microsoft and Citrix
Findings don’t just help customers; they help vendors.
Because the insights are:
- Aggregated and anonymized
- Based on real enterprise usage
- Observed across diverse environments
They act as an early feedback loop for vendors such as Microsoft, Citrix, Zoom, HP, and others.
Rather than pointing fingers, Findings provide a neutral signal helping vendors identify regressions faster while customers remain productive.
A Shared Benefit for the Entire IT Community
By publishing Findings openly, ControlUp helps break down silos that traditionally slow incident response.
The result:
- Faster collective learning
- Less duplicated troubleshooting
- Stronger trust in updates and changes
- Better outcomes for end users everywhere
In an era where issues scale instantly, shared intelligence isn’t optional; it’s essential.
Explore the Latest Findings
Visit https://www.controlupcommunity.com/findings to see current insights and stay ahead of emerging issues impacting enterprise environments.
