“Black Screen of Death”.

A few days ago, an unfortunate incident happened when Windows based machines froze and locked out users showing only a black screen in their monitors and in some cases, only the My Computer folder is seen. This was called by the media and experts as the “Black Screen of Death”.

This is not a common issue and it has been found that the mishap was not connected to Microsoft’s security updates as everyone concluded. Prevx, a UK based Security Company for one offered a software fix immediately announcing that this malfunction can potentially affect millions of Windows users and blames the mishap on the latest security patches that were deployed by Microsoft. Prevx now admits that the mishap was probably caused by malware and did not come from any misgivings in Microsoft’s part.

Mel Morris, Prevx’s CEO wrote an apology in his blog to Microsoft for the inconvenience. He stated that the issue seems to be related to a characteristic of the Windows registry which is related to the Window’s Registry when it comes to the storing of string data. To parse the Shell value in the registry, Windows would require a null terminated string. But if malware or any other program modifies the shell entry to omit terminating characters, the shell will not be able to load properly. The result of this is the infamous Black Screen showing nothing but the My Computer folder.

Microsoft was not happy with the mishap and Roger Halbheer, Chief Security Advisor of Microsoft ranted about Prevx in his own blog clearly stating that Prevx has broken their trust by spreading the false reasons for the incident and advises people not to rely on any other source except for the Microsoft Website itself.