Summary: Another large-scale failure for Microsoft's latest variant of Vista (and predecessors); Bill Gates called to court over the RRoD fiasco

Microsoft has a real black eye and a whole load of black screens of death in its hands. It is not the same as last year's black screens of death epidemic in Asia (Microsoft got sued multiple times over it), but this latest incident we have mentioned twice before this week [1, 2]. Finally, it's all over the news, with various Microsoft blogs playing the Microsoft defense, joined by others that say "Microsoft investigates".

PC SOFTWARE FLOGGER Microsoft has said it is looking into reports that its recent security updates are causing "black screen of death" problems.

It is interesting that Vista 7 is affected, but it is not surprising. From Gizmodo:

Microsoft says it's investigating reports that its latest release of security updates are causing some Windows (7, Vista and XP) machines to freeze after starting, and display a black screen with a single My Computer Explorer window.

Microsoft is quickly accumulating Xbox lawsuits in November [1, 2, 3, 4] ( amongst other types) and this latest Xbox lawsuit has Bill Gates subpoenaed over the Red Ring of Death (RRoD) fiasco which Microsoft knew about and was hiding for years, putting people's lives at risk.

Erik Estavillo -- otherwise referred to as a "professional plantiff" by GamePolitics for his laundry list of legal claims -- has subpoenaed Microsoft's Bill Gates in his suit targeting the company for his run in with the Red Ring of Death. According to court documents filed in a U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the subpoena demands Gates hand over paperwork that reveal the "true and relative number of actual Xbox 360 units that have been fixed by Microsoft over the past 3 years." Estavillo also seeks data pertaining to the number of broken Xbox 360 consoles and the amount of people banned from Xbox Live for "piracy" between November 28, 2008 and 2009.

This could get interesting. ⬆