Microsoft re-releases 'Blue Screen of Death' patch

Microsoft today re-released a security update that had crashed customers’ PCs and crippled the machines with endless reboots, saying that the revised patch is now safe to install.

The revamped MS13-036 update—first issued April 9, but pulled three days later from distribution—“resolves issues some customers experienced,” said Microsoft spokesman Dustin Childs in an email Tuesday.

“The new update, KB2840149, still addresses the Moderate security issue described in MS13-036, and should not cause these [rebooting] issues,” Childs added in a post to the Microsoft Security Response Center blog.

Two weeks ago, Microsoft yanked one of the two patches comprising MS13-036 from the Windows Update service as reports spread that the fix was generating the notorious “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD) error message and paralyzing PCs with repeated reboots.

Microsoft never clearly described the causes of the BSODs and endless reboots, saying at the time, “We’ve determined that the update, when paired with certain third-party software, can cause system errors.” Childs today also declined to get into specifics, instead saying only that “some customers were having issues.”

:story: PCWorld