Prevx apologises for Black Screen of Death allegation

A Black Screen of Death affecting some Windows users has not been caused by Microsoft’s November security updates making changes to a PC’s Registry; as earlier reported by security firm, Prevx.

Microsoft said that it conducted a comprehensive review of all the updates it released in November and this showed that none of its updates made any of the reported changes.

Prevx has now withdrawn its earlier allegations.

“We apologise to Microsoft for any inconvenience our blog may have caused. This has been a challenging issue to identify,” it said in a statement.

Christopher Budd, Microsoft’s head of security response said because the reports were not brought to the company directly it was impossible to know conclusively what may be causing the blank screens.

However, he said the issue, where users are faced with a blank screen when they log on to their PCs, is believed to be caused by variants of malicious software such as Daonol. These attacks include Trojans and rootkits.

So far the problem, which surfaced last month after Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday updates were released, is not believed to be widespread. It has affected some Windows 7 users and possibly those with XP and Vista as well.

Both companies were still investigating what is causing the problem as we went to press.

Prevx has released a tool that may be able to fix the problem for some people but it is not guaranteed. It has also outlined other ways around the problem at its blog.