Microsoft’s black screen of… not very much at all!

Posted on 4/12/2009 by Rich Adams
Lab News, Microsoft, PrevX

Now that the dust is beginning to settle on the Harry Potter and the… sorry… Microsoft and the Black Screen of Death saga, it would seem that it isn’t actually black or death like at all. It doesn’t even appear to be very dark, or even a particularly nasty shade of beige.

For those in need of a refresher, it all started last week when a small UK based internet security company called PrevX announced the danger through their blog. It could, they informed us, conceivably shut down not just windows 7 but any system more advanced than Windows 98. To stop the worlds IT luddites rubbing their hands with smug glee, however, PrevX also announced it was offering a free fix. This only had one drawback… they couldn’t guarantee it was going to work – GREAT!

As you can imagine, this set the blogosphere alight with rumour and counter rumour. It also meant Microsoft launched an immediate investigation and, sure enough, announced that they could not see any problems.

Faced with standing down the might of the world’s largest software developer, PrevX immediately began to back track. They have now announced that “"Regrettably, it is clear that our original blog post has been taken out of context, and may have caused an inconvenience for Microsoft. This was never our intention.”

The whole saga has undoubtably put PrevX on the map. But the degree to which the IT world views all this as a cynical PR ploy remains to be seen, as does the extent of any possible backlash.