Windows 10 Anniversary Update crashing PCs running on SSDs

Microsoft's Windows 10 Anniversary Update is causing PCs with solid-state drives (SSDs) to freeze and crash, according to widespread reports, in the latest in a string of embarrassments to hit Windows 10.

The crashes bear all the hallmarks of a driver problem, given that it doesn't occur in the Windows 10 Safe Mode, and seems to affect systems where apps and data are on a different drive to the operating system.

There's no fix for this at the moment, although Microsoft said that it is working on it, but some workarounds have been published. However, those instructions involve rolling back to the pre-Anniversary version.

This will be particularly irritating for users with a modest SSD running their operating system, and who have already wiped the rollback partition.

The latest set-back to affect Windows 10 users is all the more surprising given the level of testing the Anniversary Update ought to have been through via the Windows Insider programme. How does something as significant as this sneak through to the stable release?

As more and more people upgrade to SSDs, which have dramatically fallen in price in recent years, and with even smaller laptops having room for multiple drives in the form of mSATA or M.2, surely someone must have had this problem?

At the moment, users can roll back (if the files are still there) using the Recovery Console or the settings in Safe Mode.

However, it remains unclear exactly what is causing the problem. Some Windows 10 laptops running SSDs have proved to be unaffected by the widely reported problem, but many users - even users running only single SSDs - claim to have been affected.

The outbreak of crashes, coming on top of multiple other problems reported with the Anniversary Update, also undermines Microsoft's plan to introduce compulsory updates on users with Windows 10.