PrevX has apologized over its recent claim in a blog that its security update may have caused the Windows 7 operating system’s notorious ‘black screen of death’ problem. The black screen has confronted many Windows 7 users and was until yesterday thought to have been caused by a security update. Microsoft has firmly ruled this out, however, suggesting instead that its own investigation implicates malware such as Daonol as the culprit. The company was insistent that the issues described fail to match any previously documented issues in either security bulletins or knowledge base (KB) articles. It urged its customers to review security bulletins and any relevant KB articles, and to test any new security updates.
PrevX spokesman, David Kennerly, maintains that the problem may turn out to have multiple causes, insisting that his firm had identified at least 10 possible scenarios which could result in the black screen. He suggested that the cause of the black screen problem may well be a change in the lock down of registry keys in the Windows Operating System. This, Kennerly believes, invalidates several key registry entries if they are updated without regard to the new ACL rules. Microsoft has again urged users to contact its customer service line if they encounter the problem, and appear confident that the ‘black screen of death’ (a twist on the famous ‘blue screen of death’ which appeared previously when Microsoft system crashed) will shortly be conclusively resolved.
