Gadget Helpline UK: Gadget Advice, Gadget help, Gadget manual, Gadget blog. The UK’s number one gadget support club

A Blue Screen of Death (or BSoD), giving you a friendly notice that your computer has encountered a critical system error, may not be news but a Black Screen of Death definitely deserves a mention.

Some Windows 7 users have been faced with a completely black screen after logging on to their system. The problem has also been reported by Windows Vista and XP users.

Original reports that the problem was due to security updates recently issued by Microsoft have been shown to be to be false, and instead the blame lies on some good old-fashioned malware.

In a blog posting on its security site, Microsoft said it believed the malware was most likely from the Daonol family, and had nothing to do with the tech giant’s November patch update.

If you want to ensure that your PC won’t become infected, a good starting point is to check that you’ve downloaded and applied the latest patches for your Operating System and other applications. The majority of malware works by exploiting known vulnerabilities that have had patches created to address the problem.

While this may sound like we’re stating the obvious, you can also protect yourself from this malware by simply running security software to protect your computer. You don’t have to spend a fortune either, and can download something as basic as Microsoft’s Security Essentials for recession-busting price of free.

As the name implies Security Essentials is on the basic side, but combined with Windows’ pre-loaded firewall and the Windows Defender antispyware tool, this will be sufficient to protect from this latest Trojan doing the rounds.

Have you bit hit by the black out? Drop us a comment (if you can log on to someone else’s computer…) and let us know.

Popularity: 52% [?]

Tags: hack, malware, microsoft, security, windows, Windows 7, worm