& Continuous Learning

It seems the Black Screen of Death has struck again. Microsoft isn't confirming or denying that the issue was caused by a Microsoft update, but this issue is not new to Windows users. It affects all breeds of Windows OS, after logging in the screen goes black. Some users are able to bring up the task manager by doing a ctrl + alt + delete. Prevx(A security company in the UK) has provided a possible fix. Prevx released a statement about this issue:

"The cause of this recent crop of Black Screen appears to be a change in the Windows Operating System's lockdown of registry keys," wrote Kennerly. "This change has the effect of invalidating several key registry entries if they are updated without consideration of the new ACL rules being applied. For reference the rule change does not appear to have been publicized adequately, if at all, with the recent Windows updates."

Here are the recommended steps

• Restart
• Log on and wait for the black screen to appear
• Make sure your PC should be able to connect to the Internet (black screen does not appear to affect this)
• Press the CTRL, ALT and DEL keys simultaneously
• When prompted, Click Start Task Manager
• In Task Manager Click on the Application Tab
• Next Click New Task
• Now enter the command:
• "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" "http://info.prevx.com/download.asp?GRAB=BLACKSCREENFIX"  (The file has a code certificate backed by VeriSign.)
• Click OK and your (Web) browser should start up and begin the download process
• When prompted for the download Click run, the black screen fix program will download and run to automatically fix the issue.
• Now restart your PC and the black screen problem will hopefully be gone.

You have a 1 in 10 chance that this will actually work.

For all the positives that updates have to offer the truth remains that the results can sometimes be undesirable. Security patching is a must and I would never recommend not performing updates. The wise engineer will image his or her disk or make some other form of reliable backup before performing updates. Unfortunately as shown with this issue, the negative effects may take a couple of weeks to surface, and in a production environment rolling back to an image is not an option.