Rollout of Windows 10 April Update Halted For Devices With Intel and Toshiba SSDs (bleepingcomputer.com)

Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: Microsoft has halted the deployment of the Windows 10 April 2018 Update for computers using certain types of Intel and Toshiba solid state drives (SSDs). The Redmond-based OS maker took this decision following multiple user reports about the Windows 10 April 2018 Update not working properly on devices using: Intel SSD 600p Series, Intel SSD Pro 6000p Series, Toshiba XG4 Series, Toshiba XG5 Series, and Toshiba BG3 Series.

The Intel and Toshiba issues appear to be different. More specifically, Windows PCs using Intel SSDs would often crash and enter a UEFI screen after reboot, while users of Toshiba SSDs reported lower battery life and SSD drives becoming very hot.

Comments

Fix the Intel HD graphics driver, too

[jfdavis668]

Looks like the Windows 10 1803 update also prevents the Intel HD graphics driver from changing the screen brightness. Again, don't they have people check things like that before they release the update?

Re:Fix the Intel HD graphics driver, too

[omnichad]

Again, don't they have people check things like that before they release the update?

Of course they do. The Home and Pro users. They haven't rolled this out to Enterprise customers yet.

Re:Fix the Intel HD graphics driver, too

[KiloByte]

There's the Windows Insider program. Too bad, most of severe regressions -- ones that prevent booting at all -- also make any automated error reporting impossible. Manual reports are of course ignored. Heck, I bet automated reports are ignored as well.

There's a fast track update every ~2 weeks; no release since then was able to boot twice for me (somehow, it works the first time after upgrading).

It's my only Windows 10 installation; it's small enough I can dd it from backup easily -- but if I actually needed it for something productive I'd be pissed.

Re:Fix the Intel HD graphics driver, too

[denisbergeron]

My Dell Latitude crash everytime I plug my Dell 4k monitor since the last windows 10 update.

With Microsoft, you have to choose, having the last update with the last security update or having a functionnel hackable computer.

Re:Fix the Intel HD graphics driver, too

[drnb]

They fired about 3,000 quality assurance people over the last few years. This is why MS patches suck so bad now.

I guess that was not simply the legacy version teams, Win XP, Vista, 7, 8. ;-(

Re:Fix the Intel HD graphics driver, too

[AmiMoJo]

We need a new law to cover damage done by updates. Everything gets updates these days, from phones to cars. The potential for problems is high.

If an update made your car undriveable you would take it back to the dealer and drive a rental at their expense until it was fixed. Somehow Microsoft just gets away with it though.

Re:Fix the Intel HD graphics driver, too

[omnichad]

Should be an extension of lemon laws that is extended for as long as updates are made available. But the converse is that security updates not being available would also open you up to liability within a certain window.

Re:Fix the Intel HD graphics driver, too

[AmiMoJo]

Security updates are already covered for the lifetime of the product under UK law. If the device becomes unfit for purpose because of unpatched vulnerabilities you can get a partial refund based on how long you have owned it.

Re:Fix the Intel HD graphics driver, too

[thegarbz]

Again, don't they have people check things like that before they release the update?

Why are you even asking this question? MS's OS is used in millions of devices across millions of configurations. One of those configurations affected is the 2017 Surface Pro, MS's premier current device can not run its premier current OS.

The answer is not no, No, or No!. It's FUCK NO!

And people think these incompetent fuckwits would be capable of pulling off a strategy like EEE by through the Windows Subsystem for Linux. It makes me laugh.

Microsoft too busy writing bloatware

[Anonymous Coward]

To focus on bugs.They would rather work on Bubble Witch Saga than test SSDs.

Uggh

[OYAHHH]

After being nagged a LOT and worrying about MS wiping out a current session i been working on for a while I bit the bullet and installed the durn thing.

Now I'm sitting here wondering if it's gonna screw up due to my SSD.

Re:Standards would make this a non-starter

[Ambassador Kosh]

It looks like the SSDs that stuck to the standard drivers and interfaces did not run into any problems at all. Basically this only impacted drives that used custom drivers.

Scaring words: we've got some updates for your PC

[rastos1]

Hi,

We've got some updates for your PC

This might take several minutes.

The PC may reboot several times.

I love the vagueness of the messages ;-)

Re:Standards would make this a non-starter

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like the SSDs that stuck to the standard drivers and interfaces did not run into any problems at all. Basically this only impacted drives that used custom drivers.

Microsoft has brainwashed you into doing their QA for them, and you even take pride in how much of your life they have wasted.

Re:Standards would make this a non-starter

[omnichad]

custom drivers = drivers.

Re:Scaring words: we've got some updates for your

[Anonymous Coward]

dont worry, we may brick your desktop.

if your backing up to azure your data is safe -- despite your lost time and productivity.

Re:I was told Windows works with everything!

[Narcocide]

Everyone has been lying to you all along, the whole time. The entire world is a pack of lies in fact. Nothing is true or real or valid and everything you know is wrong. I hope that helps to clear things up.

I always image first.

[Mal-2]

When I know a major update is due, I make images of both machines' boot drives. I have only used such an image once, out of desperation over some strange issues I was having -- and it didn't fix them, they turned out to be due to buggy drivers that had been updated prior to my disk imaging. (So the fix was exactly the same whether Windows was updated or not.) This isn't the only time or reason for making boot drive images, of course, but it seems to me that right before a potentially disastrous procedure like a major update is a good time to be making backups. I certainly worry less about correcting brokenness after an update when I have drive images in hand. (Finding brokenness can be the hard part. Just because I use a software package infrequently, that doesn't mean it's not damn critical when I do use it.)

Imaging a half-full 250 GB SSD doesn't take that long if it's to a local drive. Pushing the image to the NAS box is another matter entirely, especially if it's by WiFi. Using a fast(ish) flash drive is somewhere in between. I have spinning rust in the desktop as well as an SSD, so that's where the images go. (They are then duplicated onto the NAS box when the machine has nothing better to do.) The Chromebook gets backed up to flash drive, then the flash drive gets transferred to the desktop for duplication to the NAS box, to take full advantage of GigE.

Re:I always image first.

[Mal-2]

The contents of my boot drive just don't change that fast. As long as I'm backing up my active projects as I go, I could roll back to last month's image, copy over the projects, and then let Windows Update do its thing, and not feel like I had lost very much. I might have to reinstall a game or something else that I had done since the backup was performed. The only things that get backed up frequently are those active projects, which may get copied multiple times a day, and the Minecraft server if it is actually being played enough to warrant it. It generally isn't, so a couple times a week is more typical. Browser bookmarks on the desktop get backed up frequently simply so they can be restored on the laptop. Then I actually have TWO backups -- the copy on the NAS box, and the copy on the other machine.

Media files often go many months between full backups, but they're on the NAS box and synced to the desktop machine's spinning rust. Again, they just don't change fast enough to justify more effort. If I lost a month's worth of torrents, I'd just fetch them again.

Re:I always image first.

[antdude]

Ditto. I make a backup of my C: once a month because of MS updates. It's not just MS too. Apple and others as well. I also make frequent important data backups too. :(

Re:I always image first.

[Mal-2]

The feature updates are announced months ahead of time, and a specific date for roll-out is generally announced in the last month. Sometimes this gets delayed a week, but that doesn't really matter for the purposes of making images.

Re:I was told Windows works with everything!

[Narcocide]

And you will need to wait (if the company isn't out of business) for them to make a patch to the driver to make it work again.

But conveniently, this is often around the same time the Linux community manages to slap together a working driver for it.

Thread to complain about this update

[bangular]

This update took it upon itself to create a new recovery partition, which then complains it's full. I eventually fixed it, but it seems like there wasn't very much QA involved in this update.

https://borncity.com/win/2018/05/02/windows-10-v1803-update-creates-a-new-oem-partition/

Re: Thread to complain about this update

[Anonymous Coward]

They fired their QA department. It is your job now.

Re:Standards would make this a non-starter

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect it more likely that (some subset) of devices that rely (the user did not install proper drivers) on the built-in Windows Complete-Utter-Hunk-Of-Shit drivers have problems. I know that the Windows built-in NVMe drivers have not worked properly in the last few iterations of Windows 10 and require special "editing" to get "Working Properly" drivers from the Manufacturers' installed initially so that a Windows install takes less than a week (if it manages to work at all).

For Standard SATA SSDs the "correct" set of Intel RST drivers is also a dogs breakfast, some working and some not so much. And Windblows System-Hoser (also known euphemistically as Windows Update) wanting to fiddle-faddle with drivers all the time is also a process fraught in peril.

For what it is worth I use a Samsung NVMe and drivers and also a Samsung SATA SSD with Magician. After fiddle-faddling with the drivers and to get the Windows Shit to go hide in the corner where it belongs, everything works just fine.

How did this get past Quality Control?

[Leslie43]

Oh right... They didn't bother to do that.
Once again I'm wondering how the heck small businesses owners deal with these problems.

Windows PCs ... would often crash

[TeknoHog]

Film at 11.

Intels days of being king and we don't give a dam

[Joe_Dragon]

Intels days of being king and we don't give a dam are over. zen 2 epyc will destroy the data center market for intel.

Re:Standards would make this a non-starter

[omnichad]

Which only boils down to a few categories with generic characteristics, and no performance features.

Graphics drivers, especially, will not ever likely be in this category.

Re:I was told Windows works with everything!

[Narcocide]

You realize you're posting to a conversation thread about Microsoft's failure to deliver a working driver for OEM hardware, right?

Re:Scaring words: we've got some updates for your

[thegarbz]

I like the way that they give you a little frowny face when Windows crashes :-(. It's about time that MS outsourced manufacture of all hardware to Mattel. Then the entire ecosystem would at least be correctly represented.

Re:Standards would make this a non-starter

[thegarbz]

It looks like the SSDs that stuck to the standard drivers and interfaces did not run into any problems at all. Basically this only impacted drives that used custom drivers.

Like the 2017 Surface Pro.

Incompetence runs deep

[thegarbz]

The incompetence Microsoft is showing at the moment really knows no bounds. It is one thing to offload your quality control to an insider program of free labour but then it's quite another to not to actually listen to any of the responses.

The problem that affected the Spring Creator's Update which caused it to be pulled in the last minute was identified in 4 separate reports months earlier by the insiders. After fixing it the insider release was so short basically any new bugs were unable to be reported.

And now this. A problem that affects a large group of SSDs including the 2017 Surface Pro. Microsoft's premier hardware product.

It's one thing to offload widespread testing onto customers. It's quite another to screw up your most premium of products. This is no longer lack of quality control, this is sheer and utter incompetence.

Re: Incompetence runs deep

[Brockmire]

I wonder if they are training their AI to triage bug reports/fixes and the fucking AI is still garbage.

SSD Temperature

[DrYak]

If your Samsung is 840 or later, you can get its own measure of temperature out of SMART attribute "190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel".
(I just don't know how to do this in Windows 10. I mostly use Linux and smartmontools.
Maybe Samsung's Wizard tools can do it ? Maybe SpeedFan ? Have a look here.)

On Samsung 830, I haven't seen such an attribute.

If that unknown sensors is nearby the SSD, it and the SSD's sensor should evolve similarly over time (spike at roughly the same time, with more or less similar top temperatures)

Good approach

[DrYak]

All my mission critical windows systems are now quarantined from the internet and other networks

Which by itself is a good approach as it drastically decrease *nearly all* security and safety risk for mission critical equipement.
(Basically only a few very advanced threats geared toward air gapped targets as stuxnet)
No mater the insanity of Windows 10 updates.

The next step would be to enclose them inside VMs and use a slightly saner host OS (something unix-y, e.g.: Linux) to handle the VMs.
Including snapshotting for safe roll back (which among other could help mitigate the buggy updates)
While of course still keeping them network isolated (they are mission critical after all).

AMD graphics drivers brightness control

[Guppy]

Looks like the Windows 10 1803 update also prevents the Intel HD graphics driver from changing the screen brightness.

This has been the case since back when Windows 8 came around for me. Every Windows update that messes with the graphics on my ASUS N56dp laptop (AMD trinity APU) breaks the screen brightness. Fortunately, it can be fixed by re-installing the manufacturer's graphics drivers, and/or a registry edit.

Re:Linux chose "open" at the cost of less cooperat

[drnb]

If you want someone to work with you there needs to be some accommodation, but with Linux there is no accommodation, only submitting to the dictates of the GPL.

OK, what if a developer signed an NDA and wrote a driver under a different license?

That has happened and users of those hardware devices have had Linux support via a closed binary. Such binaries are sometimes not installed by default due to ideological purity but some distributions have a simple question during install to allow such binaries. And users approving them get working hardware under Linux.

Re:I was told Windows works with everything!

[pnutjam]

I'll guarantee you there is a linux that runs stock on your hardware and I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's OpenSUSE.