After launching an investigation into a report of the Black Screen of Death in Windows, Microsoft has announced that the problems were not caused by the latest round of updates and accused PrevX of 'inaccurate' reporting.
Security company PrevX reported Windows lock ups to a black screen – and the news swept the planet, not least because of the 'black screen of death' label.
However, PrevX has been forced to apologise for the blog that started it all after Microsoft found inaccuracies in its findings.
Inaccurate reports
"Microsoft has investigated reports that its November security updates made changes to permissions in the registry that that are resulting in system issues for some customers," said Microsoft.
"The company has found those reports to be inaccurate and our comprehensive investigation has shown that none of the recently released updates are related to the behaviour described in the reports."
"While we were not contacted by the organisation who originally made these reports, we have proactively contacted them with our findings. Our support organisation is also not seeing this as an issue.
"The claims also do not match any known issues that have been documented in the security bulletins or KB articles."
Apologise
PrevX's apology was fast in coming: "We apologise to Microsoft for any inconvenience our blog may have caused. This has been a challenging issue to identify.
"Users who have the black screen issue referred to can still safely use our free fix tool to restore their desktop icons and taskbar.
"We have always strongly recommended keeping Windows and all other software up-to-date to reduce the window for exploitation by new threats. We'll keep you updated with further progress if we find anything new."
So perhaps black is not the new blue.
