Free App Can Quickly Check If Your PC Is Vulnerable to Meltdown and Spectre

Fixes for Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities have already been released by the majority of vendors, but for less tech-savvy users, patching a computer is quite a challenge, especially with the all the problems experienced on Windows and Linux machines after installing updates.

While in some cases updates were automatically installed on PCs, as it happened on Windows 10 where Microsoft pushed the patches via Windows Update, some might have a hard time figuring out whether other updates are needed or not.

Enter Ashampoo Spectre and Meltdown CPU Checker. Its name says pretty much everything, as this little, and more importantly, free app allows Windows users to quickly check if their systems are vulnerable to the two hardware bugs or not.

Doing this without an app is a painful process that involves running several commands in PowerShell and analyzing the output, so it goes without saying that a little tool like this is extremely helpful.

How to use the app

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to run it as everything has been developed from the very beginning to be super-intuitive and have a straightforward approach. After launching the app, the only thing you have to do is click the button that says “Start security check,” and only a few seconds later, boom, you have the result.

The application displays the security status for each of the two hardware vulnerabilities, so you’ll know if you’re exposed to based on Spectre, Meltdown, or both of them. In case patches are required, there’s a small link at the bottom of the UI to point you to more information on how to patch the system.

Overall, there isn’t a single thing you can do wrong in this app and its purpose certainly comes in handy given all the craze created following the disclosure of these vulnerabilities. You can download the Spectre and Meltdown Checker from Softpedia right now using this link.

Also, make sure you read our complete guide on how to remain protected against Meltdown and Spectre on Windows (you’re going to need that if you didn’t install the patches).