Broke 0.9 Vistas Fixed officially acknowledged Jan 4, 2018 their #11 worst broke on record

Microsoft patched a chip flaw and bricked the computer around it

January 2018 Meltdown/Spectre microcode updates made some AMD PCs unbootable

↳ caused by KB4056892 (January 2018 cumulative family) ↗

The market's verdict: +1.7% on MSFT in the week after.

Status: Fixed. Working as intended, eventually.

What actually happened

Urgent security updates for the Spectre and Meltdown chip flaws left some AMD machines, mostly older Athlon, Sempron and FX systems, stuck at a black screen with no way to boot. Microsoft stopped delivery for those machines within days and re-released corrected patches. A security fix that makes the computer unable to start is, technically, the most secure computer there is.

This one is officially acknowledged.

Were you affected? Unbreak it

Fixed patches re-released after the pause ↗

Microsoft has acknowledged this issue; a fix ships in an out-of-band or next cumulative update. Check Windows Release Health before manual workarounds.

Timeline