Microsoft says “black screens” not caused by November patches

Looks like there’s a resolution to the Prevx accusation that I talked about a couple of days ago.

Paul Thurrott says:

Microsoft completed its investigation into the so-called “Black Screen of Death” that was widely reported Monday and Tuesday and has found that it is completely bogus. According to the software giant, reports of a Black Screen related to the security updates it issued in November are “inaccurate.”

“The company has found [the Black Screen] reports to be inaccurate and our comprehensive investigation has shown that none of the recently released [security] updates are related to the behavior described in the reports,” a Microsoft representative told me late Tuesday. “While we were not contacted by the organization [that] originally made these reports, we have proactively contacted them with our findings.”

Prevx responded with its tail between its legs:

We’ve been working with Microsoft to get to the bottom of the specific black screen issues in our earlier blog.

A statement that seems to contradict what Microsoft wrote, then:

we’ve done quite a bit of testing and re-testing on the recent Windows patches including KB976098 and KB915597 as referred to in our previous blog. Since more specifically narrowing down the cause we have been able to exonerate these patches from being a contributory factor.

So there you have it. Pure garbage.

UPDATE: Ed Bott has posted a right-on analysis of the press’s reaction to the non-event. Lots of lemmings in the PC press…