14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft was indeed one of the first companies to release updates aimed at Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, but the number of users reporting issues with these patches is growing, and now appears to expand beyond the PC world.
Windows 10 Mobile devices themselves were provided with a security fix supposed to address the recently-disclosed security flaws, but just like it happened on PCs, some users have come across bugs affecting the overall stability and performance of installed apps.
A report from German site WindowsUnited reveals that users have been complaining about issues with apps like the Camera, Weather, and Amazon, with crashes occurring at random times for no clear reason. Others have reported device reboots and freezes that can’t be fixed unless the Windows Device Recovery Tool is being used to restore the operating system.
Until now, we haven’t been able to reproduce the problems on our testing Windows phones here at Softpedia and we’ve come across a limited number of complaints online, one of which reported a bug caused by the security update and which removed contact names from the address book.
PC issues with Meltdown and Spectre patches
While for the time being these appear to be just isolated reports of bugs on Windows phones, not the same thing can be said about Windows PCs where the Meltdown and Spectre patches have already wreaked havoc.
The Windows 10 cumulative update KB4056892 (Meltdown & Spectre fix) failed to install on devices with older ARM chips, and the same thing was happening in the case of update KB405694, which also includes security patches for the said vulnerabilities but aimed at Windows 7. The latter pushed PCs into an infinite BSOD loop, with no other workaround restoring PC functionality other than removing the update.
Microsoft is yet to publicly acknowledge the issues experienced with these updates, but given that tomorrow’s Patch Tuesday, the company is expected to at least provide some workarounds.