Malware blamed for Windows 7 'black screen of death'

Malware is now thought to be behind what has been dubbed the 'black screen of death' which is affecting some users of the Windows 7 operating system and some editions of Windows other operating systems.

As reported yesterday on Digital Journal, some users of the latest Windows operating system were facing a totally black screen after logging into their system. The fault was reported to have affected users of other Windows operating systems such as Vista and XP with some cases being reported in earlier operating systems. Initially it was thought that a security update launched by Microsoft on Nov. 25 was to blame but that has now been ruled out. The software firm, Prevx, who suggested that the security update was at fault, have apologised for saying that this was the cause. Microsoft, blogging on its own security site, say that they have investigated the claims and, "found that our November Security Updates are not making changes to the system that these reports say are responsible for these issues". They say that the root cause of the problem is probably down to malware such as Daonol. The software firm Prevx has retracted it statement regarding the security update and say that is had been a "challenging issue" identifying the cause. Writing on its own website Prevx said, "Having narrowed down a specific trigger for this condition we've done quite a bit of testing and re-testing on the recent Windows patches including KB976098 and KB915597 as referred to in our previous blog. Since more specifically narrowing down the cause we have been able to exonerate these patches from being a contributory factor." Prevx has apologised to Microsoft for "any inconvenience caused" by their previous statement.