Meltdown, Spectre Bugs Bring More Grief to Microsoft, AMD Users

Microsoft has temporarily paused issuing patches to the Metldown and Spectre vulnerabilities for AMD machines after a flurry of user complaints wherein PCs were rendered unbootable.

Paying heed to a large number of complaints on its support forums, Microsoft has acknowledged its users running Windows on AMD processors by preventing AMD PCs from receiving those updates.

“Microsoft has reports of customers with some AMD devices getting into an unbootable state after installing recent Windows operating system security updates,” the Redmond-based software giant confirmed, blaming AMD’s documentation for the mishap.

As a result, the software maker is now preventing AMD PCs from receiving updates in order to prevent machines from getting into an unbootable state. As it stands, Microsoft is working with AMD to resolve the issues before getting back to issuing patches to fix the vulnerabilities. As such, affected users will need to visit Microsoft’s support site for fixes, just to get their PCs back to a bootable state.

“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 said.

Publicly disclosed last week, the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities have triggered alarm from a number of tech companies including the likes of Apple, Google, Intel and Amazon, encouraging customers to install patches that were designed to lessen the risk of a hack.

Still, the hiccup for both Microsoft and AMD is an embarrassing one, even as the wider industry scrambles to issue patches for the unprecedented CPU vulnerabilities.

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