>It's worth noting that Windows Update may also fail to apply the Meltdown/Spectre patch if other conditions aren't met. >... if your system firmware is not re

>It's worth noting that Windows Update may also fail to apply the Meltdown/Spectre patch if other conditions aren't met. >... if your system firmware is not ready to accept the update, Windows Update will not apply it, and _it won't tell you_ that it's not applying it -- it will simply say 'Your device is up to date'. The update enables mitigations for Meltdown regardless of firmware. You need updated firmware for updated CPU microcode to mitigate Spectre. >I had to dig around to find a page [2] that had some useful instructions allowing me to find out what the actual status of my Windows install was. All this is transparently revealed when you run `Get-SpeculationControlSettings`, which is mentioned in the update guidelines, eg https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4073119/ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4073119/