14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is still looking into the causes that generate Blue Screens of Death and throw PCs into an unbootable state following the deployment of one of the February 2010 security updates. At the end of the past week, the Redmond company provided an update indicating that the situation might be more complex than initially thought. Essentially, the software giant revealed that it believed malicious code already infecting Windows machines might be responsible for the problems faced by end users.
“In our continuing investigation in to the restart issues related to MS10-015 that a limited number of customers are experiencing, we have determined that malware on the system can cause the behavior. We are not yet ruling out other potential causes at this time and are still investigating,” revealed Jerry Bryant, sr. security communications manager lead.
The first reports of problems were confirmed by Microsoft on February 11th, 2010. The company acknowledged at the time that MS10-015 (KB977165) triggered BSOD errors for customers, and that affected machines were unable to boot. Users reported that short of using a Recovery disc, there was no method to successfully start Windows.
Bryant reported that Microsoft had taken immediate action and pulled MS10-015, even though the company explained that the Windows patch wasn’t itself the cause of the problems. According to the Redmond company, MS10-015 simply failed to play nice with Windows kernel-level components used by third-party vendors. In the latest update offered to customers, Microsoft is saying that malware also plays a role in their problems.
“One of the key components when investigating issues like this are obtaining memory dumps from computers experiencing the problem. In order to get the information we need to fully analyze 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,” Bryant added.