Black SOD

[Rick]

It appears according to PC World article that the Black screen problem
is a result of a Nov 10 MS update, further it apparently is not limited
to Windows7 but, it can affect Vista and XP.
The article can been read here:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/183440/windows_black_screen_of_death_what_you_need_to_know.html?tk=nl_ptx_h_cbintro

[C]

No, it's the result of malware.

C

[john]

Right

[R. McCarty]

If the problem was any of the November patches & updates the issue
would affect a much larger percentage of Windows users. Malware
infection is a more likely cause. This "Always" blame MS & Windows
is usually wrong. There are statistics that show most of the BSODs and
other faults lie with 3rd party drivers and applications not with Windows.

In my office I have 5 PCs and 11 VPC machines running all kinds of
Windows - none have had any issues since the last Microsoft Updates
came on line.

"john" <jmck...@cableone.net> wrote in message
news:%236yrwK3...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...

[PA Bear [MS MVP]]

See your original thread about all this:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/browse_frm/thread/fd854870bf6eadd9

Also discussed in this thread: cf.
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsupdate/browse_frm/thread/5866be0a17ce288b

Also see...

Reports of Issues with November Security Updates:
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2009/12/01/reports-of-issues-with-november-security-updates.aspx

Windows Black Screen Root Cause [Prevx admits they were wrong & apologizes]
http://www.prevx.com/blog/141/Windows-Black-Screen-Root-Cause.html

[James Watkins]

"Rick" <Pawa...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:u6rXdC2c...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

I note that the cure recommended in the PC World article referred to the
Prefx web site where the problem was described under the header "Black
Screen woes could affect millions on Windows 7, Vista and XP". It seems the
Prefx boys were more interested in creating a lot of publicity than doing
their homework first, probably hoping to win a few ten thousand new
customers. Good try, except that it backfired.

[Tim]

>>>This "Always" blame MS & Windows
is usually wrong. There are statistics that show most of the BSODs and
other faults lie with 3rd party drivers and applications not with Windows.

That may be true. I just wish Windows gave us a bit more than a long ID full
of a bewildering amount of letters and numbers in a BSOD message screen to
help diagnose a problem. There are potentially thousands of drivers on a PC,
all interacting, and diagnosing which one is the culprit isn't easy. Why do
think so many us just give up and reformat?

Tim

"R. McCarty" <PcEngWor...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:OMMiGb3c...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

[MowGreen]

" http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?n&storyid=7672

We've had a lot of interest in the drama unfolding around Prevx's
announcment on Nov 27 that they had found a "Black Screen of Death"
issue that they had researched - you can find their initial post on this
issue here ==>
http://www.prevx.com/blog/140/Black-Screen-woes-could-affect-millions-on-Windows--Vista-and-XP.html
The title of their blog indicates that this could affect "millions of
Windows 7, Vista and XP stations". Prevx's root cause post on dec 1
( http://www.prevx.com/blog/141/Windows-Black-Screen-Root-Cause.html )
fleshes this out further, indicating that that one of the recent
Microsoft patches, either KB915597 and/or KB976098 seemed to modify the
ACLs on a registry key that in turn denies local users the right to view
their own desktop, which results in the "black screen" symptom.

This is a well known and long-standing symptom - you can deny users
access to their own screen by changing the ACLs on the registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogonShell
. This isn't a problem on it's own, it's part of the overall design of
Windows - I can think of a few cases where this might be a useful thing
in fact.

Anyway, on to the drama: Microsoft also posted on Dec 1 (
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2009/12/01/reports-of-issues-with-november-security-updates.aspx
) - they had a few important points:

* They've reviewed all of their recent updates - they simply do not
change this ACL
* They are not receiving millions of calls - this can't be
affecteding millions of systems
* Prevx went straight to press without involving Microsoft

I'd echo Microsoft on this one (on all 3 points actually) - we simply
aren't seeing any widespread "black screen" issue.

Prevx has posted a final blog entry today (
http://www.prevx.com/blog/142/Windows-Black-Screen-recap.html ).
They're now agreeing with Microsoft, that the black screen issue that
they've seen appears to have some cause unrelated to the Microsoft
updates. I can see how this might be an easy mistake to make,
especially if you are researching several issues on one machine or VM image.

The thing I find most interesting in this cyber-opera is the number of
posts that we're seeing on other sites that took the original post as
truth without doing any check at all. I realize people are busy and
everything, but a little bit of fact-checking goes a long way ....

So to recap - the "Black Screen of Death" is in fact a real thing, but
it's not a recent thing, and you won't be seeing it as a result of
applying any of the Microsoft patches to date. It's still recommended
to keep your Windows systems (and any other systems for that matter) as
up to date as possible with vendor updates. "

It's nice when *facts* supplant FUD.

MowGreen
===============
*-343-* FDNY
Never Forgotten
===============

banthecheck.com
"Security updates should *never* have *non-security content* prechecked"

[Charles Lavin]

Isn't sod usually black?

(Sorry, couldn't resist ...)

:)

"Rick" <Pawa...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:u6rXdC2c...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

[Bob I]

Not if you install it correctly! ;-)