MS-DEFCON 4: The coast is clear, apply all patches now

With the “black screen” scare out of the way, it looks like we’re good to go on the November Black Tuesday patches.

Now’s a good time to get caught up on all outstanding patches. The usual admonitions apply. Here’s what I recommend:

Use Microsoft Update, reboot when the patching is done, then try Microsoft Update again, just to make sure you got everything.

Don’t be tempted into installing new hardware drivers unless you have a specific reason for updating the driver.

Download, install and update Internet Explorer 8 – but don’t use it. (If you’re afraid of IE 8, update IE 7, but for heaven’s sake get IE 6 off your PC, and don’t use any IE unless you absolutely have to on some intransigent Web site.) Instead of IE, use Firefox or Opera or Chrome or anything that doesn’t run ActiveX.

Get rid of your antivirus and other bloated and expensive “anti” products. Download and install Microsoft Security Essentials. Wise PC folks recommend that you use an outbound firewall. I say hogwash. The inbound firewall in Windows XP, Vista and 7 is good enough, particularly if you’re using a router.

Use Secunia Personal Software Inspector (a free-for-personal use download from Secunia) to make sure all of your programs are up-to-date.

And my most recent security recommendation: upgrade to Windows 7. As long as you don’t use Internet Explorer, Win7 is inherently at least two orders of magnitude more secure than XP.

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 “While we were not contacted by the organization [that] originally made these reports, we have proactively contacted them with our findings.”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…