Microsoft halts Meltdown and Spectre patches after certain AMD chipsets are made unbootable

Microsoft halts Meltdown and Spectre patches after certain AMD chipsets are made unbootable

Microsoft halts Meltdown and Spectre patches after certain AMD chipsets are made unbootable

Over the past week, every major OS maker has been creating and distributing updates to deal with the exploits/vulnerabilities presented by Meltdown and Spectre, though it seems like the company may have been sending these fixes out too quickly, as systems with select AMD chipsets have been rendered unbootable by the update.  

Investigating these reports we have found that this problem predominantly affects users of AMD’s older CPU architectures, finding no evidence of Ryzen-based systems being susceptible to this issue. Microsoft has issued this statement confirming that the update will no longer be delivered to systems with “impacted AMD processors”.

      Microsoft has reports of some customers with AMD devices getting into an unbootable state after installing this KB. To prevent this issue, Microsoft will temporarily pause Windows OS updates to devices with impacted AMD processors at this time.

Microsoft is working with AMD to resolve this issue and resume Windows OS security updates to the affected AMD devices via Windows Update and WSUS as soon as possible. If you have experienced an unbootable state or for more information see KB4073707. For AMD specific information please contact AMD.

In another statement, Microsoft has blamed AMD, stating that affected chipsets do not conform to the documentation that AMD previously provided, attempting to absolve themselves from the blame. Regardless, Microsoft’s QA team should have been able to spot this issue before releasing the update, proving that they did not test the update on the AMD chipsets in question.  

    After investigating, Microsoft has determined that some AMD chipsets do not conform to the documentation previously provided to Microsoft to develop the Windows operating system mitigations to protect against the chipset vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown. To prevent AMD customers from getting into an unbootable state, Microsoft will temporarily pause sending the following Windows operating system updates to devices with impacted AMD processors at this time

Microsoft halts Meltdown and Spectre patches after certain AMD chipsets are made unbootable  
Microsoft will release their Meltdown/Spectre security update to affected systems once these compatibility issues are resolved. Both AMD and Microsoft are working to address the issue. 

You can join the discussion on Microsoft halting the release of their Meltdown and Spectre updates on select AMD systems on the OC3D Forums.Â