'Black Screen of Death' Linked To Patch

'Black Screen of Death' Linked To Patch

Microsoft 's November IT security patch may be to blame for the "black screen of death" that has been plaguing PC users.
Prevx, an IT products vendor, on Friday attributed some of the black screen crashes to a recent Window operating system change that locked down Windows registry keys. "This change has the effect of invalidating several key registry entries if they are updated without consideration of the new ACL rules being applied," said Prevx's Dave Kennerley in a blog post.

The IT company says millions of PC users could be affected by black screen crashes. A Google search for "black screen Windows," restricted to the past 24 hours, yields 436,000 results. Forum posts seeking help about the issue are easy to find. However, it also appears that scammers are trying to take advantage of interest in the problem by promoting internet pages about the topic that launch fake antivirus scans.