The thread on Microsoft's Community posting board started last week, and now it encompasses hundreds of comments from AMD users experiencing the same thing: a freeze-up after installing Microsoft's update that addresses Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities.
The post that started it all:
"... after installation of KB4056892 the system doesn't boot, it only shows the Windows logo without animation and nothing more. After several failed boots it do roll-back then it shows error 0x800f0845. Unfortunately, it seems it's not easy to disable the automatic updates without gpedit tweaks, so it tries installing and rolling-back the update over and over."
And since there, users around the world have commented with their trials and tribulations with the Microsoft patch:
"After a reset and and then a clean reinstall (wiping c: clean), this update still freezes the system at startup. Also, windows update keeps insisting on installing this update, if i want to get other updates and there seems no way to block this update. So it seems that either i stop updates or everytime after updating reboot the system after failure till it goes into automatic repair and reverses this update (virtualization was off at all times)," says one of the responses, which also asks a question:
"Any ideas... And MS, at least officially acknowledge the bug and that someone is looking into it."
And there are lots of suggested work-arounds. Some of them would make InfoSec teams cringe:
"My best solution is to change Windows update settings from group policy. I use update on defender to get antivirus updates but i am unable get other updates. Suffice to say this is terrible from Microsoft. I would be using linux if it wasn't for my folks who are technologically challenged."
This appears to mainly be a problem with "older" AMD laptops and PCs.
If you have a few minutes, you may want to join the conversation—or at least watch it—on Microsoft's community posting board.
