MS Patch Causes Blue Screen of Death

by Rich

Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 02:07 PM EST

Brian Krebs, in his “Krebs on Security” blog, is reporting that one of the patches from this month’s Microsoft “Patch Tuesday” is causing some Windows computers to crash with the infamous “Blue Screen of Death”. (There are also reports on this problem at Ars Technica and at the SANS Internet Storm Center.) The problem apparently affects mainly Windows XP 32-bit installations. The dodgy update is apparently MS10-015 (Microsoft KB 977165), which pertains to a Windows kernel vulnerability. Installing the update requires a system reboot; when this is done, the result is a Blue Screen with the following messages:

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer.

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA Technical Information: STOP: 0×00000050 (0×80097004, 0×00000001, 0×80515103, 0×00000000).

There is a way to uninstall the patch that seems to be causing the problem, although it requires that you have your original Windows CD, or a bootable Windows installation on a USB drive:

1. Boot from your Windows XP CD or DVD and start the recovery console (see KB307654 for help with this step)
2. Type this command: CHDIR $NtUninstallKB977165 $\spuninst
3. Type this command: BATCH spuninst.txt
4. Type this command: systemroot
5. When complete, type this command: exit

If you are a home user in the US or Canada, you are eligible for free support from Microsoft on security-related issues; you can open a support incident by calling 1-866-PCSAFETY. If you have not yet installed this month’s patches, and are running XP, it might be wise to skip installing MS10-015.

I will update this post with further information if/as it becomes available.