5 ms·

Windows operating system security update block for some AMD based devices

41 points by rdtsc 9y ago

throwaway2048 9y ago
Breaking windows is not bricking a machine, can we please stop abusing this term. Brick means irrevocably render an electronic device inoperative (making it as useful as a brick), short of something like JTAG or soldering. This is especially important surrounding hardware bug concerns like this, because its at least conceivable that interactions with hardware bugs really could brick machines. EDIT: for posterity post title is "Windows AMD Spectre patches brick some machines" atm.
- andrewstuart2 9y ago
  I do agree with you, but at the same time, a non-booting OS does essentially mean a heavy-but-useless device for the vast majority of computer users. They'll have to spend their own money taking it in to get the OS reinstalled, and a lot more if they want to try to recover the data still on the file system.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    Or use some other computer and a USB key fob to create a bootable USB disk that can fix it, and reading the directions on how to boot from it on their phone while actually at the computer in question. Of have their kids do as much. We're probably a few days at most from something like that being put together (possibly by MS or AMD themselves) if it hasn't already. It's not 2005, there's a much higher population of people that have at least enough experience to follow directions such as that.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  That's fair, I updated the title. I though bricking was a shorter title but your point is true.
- mattnewton 9y ago
  Fair point, though for a typical end user this might be indistinguishable
- zeep 9y ago
  You appear to be talking about soft brick vs hard brick? neither hard brick or soft brick is physically broken though...
  - chrisper 9y ago
    "Bricked" refers to that your device can now be used as a brick and nothing else... at least that's how I always understood it.
  - da_chicken 9y ago
    Brick means "to render a device permanently inoperable." There is no hard or soft involved. Bricked is bricked. If you can recover the device without replacing hardware or components, you didn't brick it, you just fucked it up.
    - korethr 9y ago
      I think it's fair to say that different people have different thresholds for "bricked" depending on their awareness, willingness, and ability with regard to various repair techniques that may be to hand. To my mother, a virus that causes her laptop to bluescreen upon boot is bricked. There's nothing she can do about that. To me, you gotta do something like wreck the firmware, and even that's not quite permanent, as I am not afraid of soldering tools.
      - josteink 9y ago
        Your grandma is not going to say the machine is “bricked”. She will say it’s not working. Bricked is a technical term used by techies, and it has one specific meaning. Bricked is bricked.
        zeep 9y ago
        to me, soft bricked means that you have to do something out of the ordinary to fix it, something that most people would not know how to do, even if it's just a software problem (maybe it's a new problem that had no known solutions yet)... http://unbrick.itcse.com/soft-brick-vs-hard-bricked-vs-broken-android-device/ http://unbrick.itcse.com/soft-brick-vs-hard-bricked-vs-broke...
- at-fates-hands 9y ago
  I used to repair smartphones and this was a common phrase when someone would try and install a custom ROM. They would do it wrong and essentially brink the phone. It's weird for me to hear it in software circles, since I've always thought of software as being more malleable. Correct a few lines of code here or there and you're up and running again.
  - vetinari 9y ago
    On smartphones, if you do the custom ROM installation badly, there's a chance you will wipe SPL, meaning no way to boot anymore, until you reprogram your flash in external programmer. This is not a case on the PCs; updating or reinstalling operating system will not affect your BIOS or UEFI ability to boot anything in the future[1] [1] with exceptions like Ubuntu 17.10 Intel SPI bug. But hey, exceptions confirm the rule ;).
MikusR 9y ago
The important part: "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."
- gmiller123456 9y ago
  Which shows, that no matter how certain you are that your code matches the specifications, it still pays to test it.
amadeusw 9y ago
Looking for which hardware is affected, I only found a statement form AMD [0] tldr, Ryzen CPUs are fine > "AMD is aware of an issue with some older generation processors following installation of a Microsoft security update that was published over the weekend. AMD and Microsoft have been working on an update to resolve the issue and expect it to begin rolling out again for these impacted shortly." [0] http://www.techradar.com/news/meltdown-and-spectre-windows-patch-halted-for-amd-pcs-after-it-causes-boot-failure http://www.techradar.com/news/meltdown-and-spectre-windows-p...
- korethr 9y ago
  It would be nice to know which older CPUs are affected. Do I have to worry about my Fam 10h processors getting bricked, or just my K-7 and K-8 systems?
- Osiris 9y ago
  I'm surprised by this because I know that Microsoft has a test lab with various hardware configurations and software to help verify that updates don't break existing software. Doesn't Microsoft have the resources to run automated tests on enough hardware configurations to have caught this?
  - sitharus 9y ago
    They do, but there’s a huge number of possible configurations of both hardware and software to choose from and they’re always going to miss some.
  - bluedino 9y ago
    How far back do the machines in Microsoft testing lab go? I heard the chips having the problems were Athlons from 2005-2006, which are 12-13 years old now. Apple doesn't have to worry about this kind of stuff when they patch OS X because they are able to drop support for anything they want after a certain time.
andreano 9y ago
Unbootable, they say. I think they actually mean it!
andreano 9y ago
Unbootable, they say. So I think they actually mean it!
yuhong 9y ago
I posted these two images: https://imgur.com/a/QANol https://imgur.com/a/QANol https://imgur.com/a/h3MhG https://imgur.com/a/h3MhG Notice the variables they set up that RtlInterlockedPopEntrySList don't use.
AaronFriel 9y ago
Related, I just shared that Microsoft is going to make the mitigations for Windows Server optional https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16108356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16108356 This should make it very clear that other vendors downplaying the performance impact were misleading users.
- merb 9y ago
  yep they even have a KB article where they said where the fix is NECESSARY and where it might be ok to not install it: > https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4072698/windows-server-guidance-to-protect-against-the-speculative-execution https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4072698/windows-ser... Part: "Enabling protections on the server" it even has a registry key to enable/disable it. Basically they say that: > Your server is at increased risk if it is in one of the following categories: > > Hyper-V hosts > Remote Desktop Services Hosts (RDSH) > For physical hosts or virtual machines that are running untrusted code such as containers or > untrusted extensions for database, untrusted web content or workloads that run code that is > provided from external sources.
Neil44 9y ago
I had an AMD machine in on Monday that I installed in 2009, was chugging along fine until this update. Now has a stop error on boot. New machine time - which actually gives Microsoft money in reward for their mistake but is the best course of action for the client. It’s just expense for the the client and inconvenience for all involved.

41 points by rdtsc 9y ago

throwaway2048 9y ago

Breaking windows is not bricking a machine, can we please stop abusing this term. Brick means irrevocably render an electronic device inoperative (making it as useful as a brick), short of something like JTAG or soldering. This is especially important surrounding hardware bug concerns like this, because its at least conceivable that interactions with hardware bugs really could brick machines. EDIT: for posterity post title is "Windows AMD Spectre patches brick some machines" atm.

andrewstuart2 9y ago
I do agree with you, but at the same time, a non-booting OS does essentially mean a heavy-but-useless device for the vast majority of computer users. They'll have to spend their own money taking it in to get the OS reinstalled, and a lot more if they want to try to recover the data still on the file system.
- kbenson 9y ago
  Or use some other computer and a USB key fob to create a bootable USB disk that can fix it, and reading the directions on how to boot from it on their phone while actually at the computer in question. Of have their kids do as much. We're probably a few days at most from something like that being put together (possibly by MS or AMD themselves) if it hasn't already. It's not 2005, there's a much higher population of people that have at least enough experience to follow directions such as that.
rdtsc 9y ago
That's fair, I updated the title. I though bricking was a shorter title but your point is true.
mattnewton 9y ago
Fair point, though for a typical end user this might be indistinguishable
zeep 9y ago
You appear to be talking about soft brick vs hard brick? neither hard brick or soft brick is physically broken though...
- chrisper 9y ago
  "Bricked" refers to that your device can now be used as a brick and nothing else... at least that's how I always understood it.
- da_chicken 9y ago
  Brick means "to render a device permanently inoperable." There is no hard or soft involved. Bricked is bricked. If you can recover the device without replacing hardware or components, you didn't brick it, you just fucked it up.
  - korethr 9y ago
    I think it's fair to say that different people have different thresholds for "bricked" depending on their awareness, willingness, and ability with regard to various repair techniques that may be to hand. To my mother, a virus that causes her laptop to bluescreen upon boot is bricked. There's nothing she can do about that. To me, you gotta do something like wreck the firmware, and even that's not quite permanent, as I am not afraid of soldering tools.
    - josteink 9y ago
      Your grandma is not going to say the machine is “bricked”. She will say it’s not working. Bricked is a technical term used by techies, and it has one specific meaning. Bricked is bricked.
      - zeep 9y ago
        to me, soft bricked means that you have to do something out of the ordinary to fix it, something that most people would not know how to do, even if it's just a software problem (maybe it's a new problem that had no known solutions yet)... http://unbrick.itcse.com/soft-brick-vs-hard-bricked-vs-broken-android-device/ http://unbrick.itcse.com/soft-brick-vs-hard-bricked-vs-broke...
at-fates-hands 9y ago
I used to repair smartphones and this was a common phrase when someone would try and install a custom ROM. They would do it wrong and essentially brink the phone. It's weird for me to hear it in software circles, since I've always thought of software as being more malleable. Correct a few lines of code here or there and you're up and running again.
- vetinari 9y ago
  On smartphones, if you do the custom ROM installation badly, there's a chance you will wipe SPL, meaning no way to boot anymore, until you reprogram your flash in external programmer. This is not a case on the PCs; updating or reinstalling operating system will not affect your BIOS or UEFI ability to boot anything in the future[1] [1] with exceptions like Ubuntu 17.10 Intel SPI bug. But hey, exceptions confirm the rule ;).

MikusR 9y ago

The important part: "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."

gmiller123456 9y ago
Which shows, that no matter how certain you are that your code matches the specifications, it still pays to test it.

amadeusw 9y ago

Looking for which hardware is affected, I only found a statement form AMD [0] tldr, Ryzen CPUs are fine > "AMD is aware of an issue with some older generation processors following installation of a Microsoft security update that was published over the weekend. AMD and Microsoft have been working on an update to resolve the issue and expect it to begin rolling out again for these impacted shortly." [0] http://www.techradar.com/news/meltdown-and-spectre-windows-patch-halted-for-amd-pcs-after-it-causes-boot-failure http://www.techradar.com/news/meltdown-and-spectre-windows-p...

korethr 9y ago
It would be nice to know which older CPUs are affected. Do I have to worry about my Fam 10h processors getting bricked, or just my K-7 and K-8 systems?
Osiris 9y ago
I'm surprised by this because I know that Microsoft has a test lab with various hardware configurations and software to help verify that updates don't break existing software. Doesn't Microsoft have the resources to run automated tests on enough hardware configurations to have caught this?
- sitharus 9y ago
  They do, but there’s a huge number of possible configurations of both hardware and software to choose from and they’re always going to miss some.
- bluedino 9y ago
  How far back do the machines in Microsoft testing lab go? I heard the chips having the problems were Athlons from 2005-2006, which are 12-13 years old now. Apple doesn't have to worry about this kind of stuff when they patch OS X because they are able to drop support for anything they want after a certain time.

andreano 9y ago

Unbootable, they say. I think they actually mean it!

andreano 9y ago

Unbootable, they say. So I think they actually mean it!

yuhong 9y ago

I posted these two images: https://imgur.com/a/QANol https://imgur.com/a/QANol https://imgur.com/a/h3MhG https://imgur.com/a/h3MhG Notice the variables they set up that RtlInterlockedPopEntrySList don't use.

AaronFriel 9y ago

Related, I just shared that Microsoft is going to make the mitigations for Windows Server optional https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16108356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16108356 This should make it very clear that other vendors downplaying the performance impact were misleading users.

merb 9y ago
yep they even have a KB article where they said where the fix is NECESSARY and where it might be ok to not install it: > https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4072698/windows-server-guidance-to-protect-against-the-speculative-execution https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4072698/windows-ser... Part: "Enabling protections on the server" it even has a registry key to enable/disable it. Basically they say that: > Your server is at increased risk if it is in one of the following categories: > > Hyper-V hosts > Remote Desktop Services Hosts (RDSH) > For physical hosts or virtual machines that are running untrusted code such as containers or > untrusted extensions for database, untrusted web content or workloads that run code that is > provided from external sources.

Neil44 9y ago

I had an AMD machine in on Monday that I installed in 2009, was chugging along fine until this update. Now has a stop error on boot. New machine time - which actually gives Microsoft money in reward for their mistake but is the best course of action for the client. It’s just expense for the the client and inconvenience for all involved.