Prevx says "LOL sry" to Microsoft re: black screen of death uproar

Oh Ed Bott, what would we do without you?

Seriously. Amidst the 1.3 trillion "black screen error" posts recently published on every blog in the Milky Way, Ed's breakdown today was the first to really dig in to the reality behind Prevx's claims that recent Windows 7 patches were rendering systems totally unusable.

You might have wondered why you didn't read about the "story" earlier this week on Download Squad. We cover a lot of Windows 7 news, after all, and this sure sounded like news. But it wasn't. And like Ed, we wanted to see what shook loose once Microsoft's engineers had a chance to examine the facts.

The Internet Storm Center couldn't find any evidence to back up Prevx's claim. Scott Fulton of BetaNews found it odd that Prevx offered a quick-fix .exe download even though they admitted not having a complete understanding of what was causing the issue.

And, as it turns out, Prevx wound up issuing a retraction on their company blog. Rather than calling it a retraction, though, it's entitled "Windows Black Screen Recap." The post also says that other blogs "took their original post out of context," which is an interesting statement -- when you title something "Black Screen woes could affect millions on Windows 7, Vista and XP" how do you expect people to interpret it?

There's every chance they were hoping for a little Google juice there, as Ed also points out in his CNet post. Why would he think that?

Google 'Windows 7 black screen' and see what comes up at #1. Well done, Prevx. For what turned out to be a non-issue, you've raised public awareness of your company a thousandfold.

Tags: black screen, BlackScreen, commentary, Ed Bott, EdBott, error, prevx, windows, windows 7, Windows7, wtf