It was widely reported that a UK company was claiming that one of last weeks security updates by Microsoft was causing a “black screen of death” where Explorer would show nothing when you logged in. Microsoft responded overnight:
“While these reports weren’t brought to us directly, from our research into them, it appears they’re saying that our security updates are making permission changes in the registry to the value for the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogonShell key.
We’ve conducted a comprehensive review of the November Security Updates, the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, and the non-security updates we released through Windows Update in November. That investigation has shown that none of these updates make any changes to the permissions in the registry. Thus, we don’t believe the updates are related to the “black screen” behavior described in these reports.
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. 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”.
There you have it. Prevx didn’t do the responsible thing, i.e. contact Microsoft directly, and instead decided to generate some publicity for themselves. Their claims have been refuted so this leads me to wonder: are these developers more of the same who don’t comply with documented standards and just write rubbish code and to hell with their customers? I don’t know them, never dealt with them and certainly never heard of them before yesterday. You decide 🙂