14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is now making the Meltdown and Spectre security updates available for some AMD chips once again, after the patches were previously pulled due to causing issues like boot failures.
Even though an official announcement in this regard hasn’t been provided, Microsoft did update the original advisory on January 11 to state that some AMD chips are now getting this month’s Windows security updates, though no specifics were provided as to what chipsets the company has added to the supported list.
“Microsoft has resumed updating the majority of AMD devices with the Windows operating system security update to help protect against the chipset vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown,” the updated advisory reads.
Redmond’s decision to temporarily pull security updates for impacted AMD chips was aimed at nine different Windows patches, all of them supposed to resolve the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. All Windows versions were affected, including Windows 7 and Windows 10.
Remaining chipsets to get patches by next week
Below is the list of updates that were previously suspended but which are now becoming available to specific AMD chipsets, with the rest of impacted devices to get them very soon as well:
| January 3, 2018—KB4056897 (Security-only update) January 9, 2018—KB4056894 (Monthly Rollup) January 3, 2018—KB4056888 (OS Build 10586.1356) January 3, 2018—KB4056892 (OS Build 16299.192) January 3, 2018—KB4056891 (OS Build 15063.850) January 3, 2018—KB4056890 (OS Build 14393.2007) January 3, 2018—KB4056898 (Security-only update) January 3, 2018—KB4056893 (OS Build 10240.17735) January 9, 2018—KB4056895 (Monthly Rollup) |
“Microsoft is working with AMD to resolve this issue and should resume Windows OS security updates to this subset of AMD processors via Windows Update and WSUS by next week,” the firm says.
AMD has published its own advisory on Meltdown and Spectre updates, and the company provides only vague details as to what chips might be affected.
“Microsoft is distributing patches for the majority of AMD systems now. We are working closely with them to correct an issue that paused the distribution of patches for some older AMD processors (AMD Opteron, Athlon and AMD Turion X2 Ultra families) earlier this week. We expect this issue to be corrected shortly and Microsoft should resume updates for these older processors by next week,” AMD says.