Microsoft: Windows Black Screen Reports 'Inaccurate'
Some reports have suggested that the November Patch Tuesday updates made changes to permissions in the Windows registry, but after looking into the matter, Microsoft says these claims aren't valid.
"The company has found those reports to be inaccurate and our comprehensive investigation has shown that none of the recently released updates are related to the behavior described in the reports," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email.
Microsoft's worldwide customer service team isn't seeing widespread reports of the black screen issue, said Christopher Budd, Security Response Communications Lead at Microsoft, in a Tuesday blog post.
Since no one reported the issue directly to Microsoft, the company can't say for sure what's causing the problem, but previous black screen issues have been linked to malware families such as Daonol, Budd said in the blog post.
Microsoft seems a bit peeved with security vendor Prevx, which last Friday issued a fix for the glitch and said it could affect "millions" of Windows 7, XP, and Vista users.
Prevx also claimed that the recent black screen issues were being caused by Microsoft changing the way it locks down registry keys in Windows. Microsoft says it wasn't contacted by Prevx but has "proactively contacted" the company to share the details of its investigation of the matter. It's safe to say Microsoft's correspondence won't include a holiday gift basket.