Microsoft insists that new patches don't destabilize systems
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Amid highly publicized allegations that several recent security fixes can cause Windows PCs to crash unexpectedly, Microsoft defended itself yesterday, saying that the reports of black-screens-of-death were erroneous and that its own tests had discovered no such problems.
A British IT security firm, Prevx, reported Monday that the November batch of security patches for Windows 7, Vista, and XP were causing registry permission changes that resulted in system crashes in many PCs. Prevx went public with its findings without consulting Microsoft, and advised users to download its security tool to fix this and other issues in virus protection and security.
However, Microsoft responded quickly to the allegation, asserting that it had tested the patches and that they had not caused any of the registry changes. A posting on the Microsoft Security Response Center's blog speculates that the black-screen-of-death problems could be due to malware infection.
Prevx has since backed down and apologized to Microsoft for its error, saying that it did not conduct thorough tests to ascertain the truth of the rumors.
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