Microsoft pulls Meltdown and Spectre Windows patch poleaxing AMD Athlon PCs, blaming AMD for the borkage
AMD documentation not up to snuff, sniffs Microsoft
Microsoft has blamed AMD for the Athlon CPU borkage experienced by users installing the company's operating-system-level patch for Meltdown and Spectre.
Windows users with AMD Athlon chips have found their systems completely borked following the rushed out-of-band patch, finding themselves unable to get past the splash screen in Windows 10 after the patch was applied.
Worse than that, though, the patch didn't create a restore point, leaving users unable to rollback the shonky update.
Microsoft has determined that some AMD chipsets do not conform to the documentation previously provided to Microsoft
Microsoft, though, has been quick to wash its corporate hands of any blame:
"Microsoft has reports of customers with some AMD devices getting into an unbootable state after installing recent Windows operating system security updates," the company claimed.
"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."
Because Microsoft changed its policy to roll up security patches into one, big update the withdrawal of the patch means that a number of other security updates have had to be pulled at the same time - just as Microsoft was warned when it introduced the policy.
This comes in addition to a Blue Screen of Death problem caused by certain antivirus software, announced on 3 January, to whit:
"The compatibility issue arises when antivirus applications make unsupported calls into Windows kernel memory. These calls may cause stop errors (also known as blue screen errors) that make the device unable to boot.
"To help prevent stop errors that are caused by incompatible antivirus applications, Microsoft is only offering the Windows security updates that were released on January 3, 2018, to devices that are running antivirus software that is from partners who have confirmed that their software is compatible with the January 2018 Windows operating system security update."
Microsoft has also announced that it won't let any patches, present or future, through unless antivirus software vendors set a registry key to tell Windows that their software is compatible with the Meltdown and Spectre patches.