Microsoft's self-exposure of a surefire way to prevent black screens: Uninstalling components can put your mind at ease.

Since noon today, online posts with the title "Microsoft's anti-piracy black screen patch for XP has been cracked before October 20" have successively appeared on major forums. Netizens warned Microsoft, "We'll play along if you want," and subsequently provided a workaround contributed by a netizen named "f1098": Start - Run - input REGEDIT and press Enter, find the item HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\NotifyWgaLogon in the left column, and delete the entire WgaLogon item.