Yesterday, Neowin reported on an issue affecting a limited amount of users and dubbed the "Black Screen Of Death".
Originally, at least according to Prevx, the "Black Screen Of Death" could affect "millions". Prevx, a little known software company from the UK, claimed that Microsoft"s recent patches (KB915597 and KB976098) were at fault in triggering a dumb session of Windows after login. The symptoms resulted in post logon having no desktop, task bar, system tray or side bar. Instead you are left with a totally black screen and a single My Computer Explorer window.
Initially Neowin commenters were doubtful, and rightly so. "Who the hell are Prevx?" asked one and "the story just seems odd to me" another. It appears that both Prevx and IDG News Service (ComputerWorld), who published the story as "Latest Microsoft patches cause black screen of death", jumped in way too early. According to Microsoft, the reports of the issues weren"t even brought to them directly and through the usual channels. "Because these reports were not brought to us directly, it"s impossible to know conclusively what might be causing a "black screen" in those limited instances where customers have seen it" said Christopher from the The Microsoft Security Response Center.
Microsoft also confirmed they had not seen broad incident reports on the issue, stating "we"ve also checked with our worldwide Customer Service and Support organization, and they"ve told us they"re not seeing "black screen" behavior as a broad customer issue."
Meanwhile, Prevx have now issued an apology regarding their "findings". Prevx now blame malware for making changes to the registry which causes this behaviour. In a statement on Prevx"s company blog, Jacques Erasmus, director of research at Prevx stated "we apologize to Microsoft for any inconvenience our blog may have caused. This has been a challenging issue to identify."