Microsoft says patch of Windows 7 isn't cause of black screen

BEIJING, Dec. 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Microsoft on Tuesday denied a claim that its November security patch of Windows 7 is among the possible causes of the black screen problems affecting some Windows users.

Copies of Microsoft Windows 7 are displayed in Redmond, Washington,  October 22, 2009. Microsoft Corp launched Windows 7 on Thursday in  its most important release for more than a decade, aiming to win  back customers after the disappointing Vista and strengthen its  grip on the PC market.(Xinhua/Reuters File Photo)

On Friday, Prevx, a maker of antivirus software, which is based in the U.K., attributed some of these black screen crashes to the Microsoft's new operating system change that locked down Windows registry keys.

But Microsoft insisted that's just wrong.

"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 Christopher Budd, Microsoft security response communications lead, in an e-mailed statement. "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 behavior described in the reports."

Budd said that Prevx's claims did not match known issues documented in security bulletins or Knowledge Base articles.

The error appears to occur after logging on to the affected systems and features a black-screen-of-death, rendering the computer unresponsive. The error has been reported to occur on Windows 7, Vista, and XP systems and began cropping up after its latest Patch day, which occurred on November 10. The new problem has landed on some users' systems causing concern. Thus some have speculated that the error was somehow triggered by the patch, possibly via modifications to the Access Control List (ACL) entries in the registry.