Microsoft Resumes Meltdown & Spectre Updates for AMD Devices

rgMekanic

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A report from BleepingComputer states that Microsoft is resuming the rollout of security updates for AMD devices to patch the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. Microsoft had halted the rollout for AMD-based machines on January 9th, after their patch left users with PCs that were crashing, and left in an unbootable state.

Good to see they are working in it, but releasing something that causes a machine to become unbootable is really unacceptable. The article also mentions that out of the 9 updates Microsoft is releasing, 4 of them are still paused for unspecified reasons. Hopefully the fixes will keep coming swiftly.

The Meltdown flaw does not affect AMD devices, but these updates include an OS-level patch for the Spectre flaw. An additional CPU microcode (firmware) update is also needed to fully patch the Spectre bug. AMD said it was working on firmware updates it hoped to have ready by the end of the current month.
 
Nothing wrong with my Ryzen cpu.Oh well, some days chickens some days feathers
 
Good luck with firmware updates probably won't see them for any cpu over a year old. Thanks Intel for the crappy engineering.....
AMD gets a hell of a sales opportunity here.....
 
Like other have stated ..... it's foolish to update firmware along with allowing Microsoft Updates atm.

There are several ways to perm block updates .... do some research.

Let the storm pass then when the bugs are worked out you can do your updates
 
I have an old Athlon X2. I might dig it out and install Windows 10 just to see if I can kill it with an update.
 
Hello, Microsoft cannot harm your CPU, only their OS. But yeah, starting bid $500 for my quad Phenom II .
 
Last week I had my PC on and as I was walking through the bedroom I noticed it was updating. Afterward, I started having trouble with my mouse being intermittent. I'd move it across the screen and it would pause and then jump over. After a restart it was fine again, until it wasn't. At first I thought it was related to one of these updates since I had read about it messing with AMD cpu's. But then when I looked at updates it said the last update was in December. I was confused since it was just last week that it was updating. I think I figured out it was my MSI Command Center that was causing it since I noticed when it was running it was happening. But I don't know why that started causing it all of a sudden.
 
Interesting. None of my Linux boxes have failed.

What exactly are users paying for when they buy a Windows license? Between these update issues, steady removal of features, and lack of enthusiasm from Microsoft for the desktop in general I'm not really seeing any benefit for home desktop users anymore. Even as a gaming platform Windows is sputtering and losing ground to Linux/Vulkan.
 
Interesting. None of my Linux boxes have failed.

What exactly are users paying for when they buy a Windows license? Between these update issues, steady removal of features, and lack of enthusiasm from Microsoft for the desktop in general I'm not really seeing any benefit for home desktop users anymore. Even as a gaming platform Windows is sputtering and losing ground to Linux/Vulkan.

I've updated 8 Windows 10 machines with this patch and had no issues getting it installed on all of them. When you're talking about 10s of 100s of millions machines, be it Linux of Windows or macOS or whatever, there are going to some problems with updates. Indeed Ubuntu had similar problems to Windows here: http://news.softpedia.com/news/just...-due-to-meltdown-spectre-patches-519323.shtml.

As for Windows sputtering as a gaming platform, that simply defies reality. Game titles for Windows have exploded the last couple of years with a 50% increase YoY on Steam last year in the number of Windows game titles. Linux release counts have been relatively flat in the same time and the gap in tiles counts has only widened relative to Windows. Steam is showing over 400 Windows titles released or coming to release just this year, only 19 days old. Meanwhile there's less than 50 for Linux.
 
It took me a week of off/on attempts to get the patch on 1 Win 10 matchine, including 2 hours with Microsoft remote controlling it. Things can definitely go wrong.
 
It took me a week of off/on attempts to get the patch on 1 Win 10 matchine, including 2 hours with Microsoft remote controlling it. Things can definitely go wrong.

No doubt. It's all about the failure rate though and I honestly have no idea what would be considered a reasonable failure rate or how to compare Linux to Windows in this regard. But the idea that one could just install Linux on every Windows machine and everything run smooth as silk is preposterous.
 
Interesting. None of my Linux boxes have failed.

What exactly are users paying for when they buy a Windows license? Between these update issues, steady removal of features, and lack of enthusiasm from Microsoft for the desktop in general I'm not really seeing any benefit for home desktop users anymore. Even as a gaming platform Windows is sputtering and losing ground to Linux/Vulkan.

Well, for many games Windows is still the only choice. Personally, if not for games, I'd just run Linux.
 
No doubt. It's all about the failure rate though and I honestly have no idea what would be considered a reasonable failure rate or how to compare Linux to Windows in this regard. But the idea that one could just install Linux on every Windows machine and everything run smooth as silk is preposterous.

The ironic thing is that I finally have it patched and I'm going to roll back and redo it myself. Microsoft's support changed like a hundred things and I can't feel good about the future unless I wipe that out.
 
amd is not affect by meltdown, and only 1 of 2 spectre, so why isn't that mentioned? Intel paying microsoft to spread fud?
 
I installed the meltdown patch on two haswell I7 laptops and one Sandycreek I7.. Did not notice any noticable slowdowns in benchmarks. However the desktop seems sluggish sometimes even lagging in response so I uninstalled the meltdown patch, Guess what snappynish returned to all three machines..I would rather take my chances than live with half assed performance. Thanks Intel for the security hole or (backdoor) Won't be buying intel again.....
 
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