It’s been over two months since the Windows blank screen of death frenzy escalated around the internet and it’s showing little sign of quieting down. My Twitter feed is still showing a steady stream of outdated links relating to the original issue. Many are still publishing articles based on Prevx’s initial claim.
I’m amazed at the wave of panic ensuing from the gossip. Was the blank screen of death all it was hyped up to be? Did it affect the masses like it was initially claimed? No. However, yet again, another issue for Microsoft has risen, but this one is an enemy that’s been around for years: the blue screen of death.
The Microsoft Support Service was flooded with reports last Wednesday of XP machines being rendered unusable with a blue screen of death following the latest security update. Upon rebooting their computer, devices failed to start up, and instead presented a blue screen and the message: ‘A problem has been detected and Windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer’.
XP users narrowed the problem down to update KB977165 - a patch intended to tackle a 17 year-old kernel bug present in all 32-bit versions of Windows. Following the identification, Microsoft released the following solution:
- Boot your Windows XP CD or DVD and start the recovery console
- Type this command: CHDIR $NtUninstallKB977165$\spuninst
- Type this command: BATCH spuninst.txt
- When complete, type this command: exit
Once you are in the Repair Screen...
Upon further exploration it has been suggested that the issue could be related to malware, although they are not ruling out other potential causes at this time and are continuing with their investigation: “In order to get the information we need to fully analyse the issue, some of our support engineers have actually driven to customer locations and picked up affected systems so we can get the needed crash data directly and help inform our investigation” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
For now, XP users should avoid downloading the patch.
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