back to article Wanted that Windows 10 update but have an Intel SSD? Computer says no

The Windows 10 April 2018 Update is not proving to be the smoothest of installations for PCs containing certain Intel SSDs. Systems with Intel 600p and Pro 6000p SSDs are experiencing crashes and users are finding themselves staring at a UEFI screen after rebooting. Microsoft has recommended afflicted users reinstall the …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Flakey

    That the model of harddrive you have makes the difference between working and not working..

    IBM Compatible anyone????

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Flakey

      "That the model of harddrive you have makes the difference between working and not working.."

      Which as hundreds of other models work just fine implies the issue is the HDD, not Windows.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        WTF?

        Re: Flakey

        "Which as hundreds of other models work just fine implies the issue is the HDD, not Windows."

        So it works on other versions not the brand new version? So it MUST be the hardware.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Flakey

      "That the model of harddrive you have makes the difference between working and not working..

      IBM Compatible anyone????"

      Hardware variation has always been a problem.

      The worst part is when manufacturers change components without changing model numbers, which can lead to software failing on 'models' that have been exhaustively tested for many months, as the guts of the current production model being shipped do not match the nominally identical units used for testing.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wanted? I thought it was foisted regardless?

    1. James O'Shea

      It just doesn’t show on some systems.

      Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is left as an exercise for the student.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "It just doesn’t show on some systems"

        Yeh right, the one's without an internet connection maybe, this update is truly persistent.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "It just doesn’t show on some systems."

        If you do a manual update, it shows up. If you leave it as Auto Update, you don't get it.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      "Wanted? I thought it was foisted regardless?"

      You mean one day I'll run $ yaourt -Syu and find myself mashing ctrl-c really, really quickly and taking a long hard look at my mirror lists??

      Karma to burn

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "...$ yaourt -Syu and find myself mashing ctrl-c really, really quickly and taking a long hard look at my mirror lists?"

        And people wonder why Linux isn't more popular.

  3. James O'Shea

    Not just Intel SSDs

    I’m running Win 10 in, among other installations, a VM running on a Mac with a Samsung SSD. Win 10 updates to the April Update on almost all systems not in VMs. It updates on systems in VMs, including running on Macs, as long as the host systems are running from spinning rust. It doesn’t like VMs running on SSDs. It doesn’t like some SSDs, not long limited to Intel SSDs.

    If this wasn’t heresy, I’d say that Microsoft may have made an error or two in their installer, but we know that they never make mistakes, so this can’t be true, right?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not just Intel SSDs

      To summarise,

      It is CRAP.

      nothing new there then.

      MS really hates us users don't they?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      'as long as host systems running spinning rust'

      Sounds like a way to cripple updates. Useful bit of info to know!

    3. Paul 129

      Re: Not just Intel SSDs

      Typical MS upgrade. Some hardware is more compatible than others.

      The round of updates that affected even windows 7 made 7,8,10 all incompatible with a little tplink usb-3 hub of mine. (spinny icon of wait and a black screen, not the spinny dots) Its unfortunately a normal part of updating windows. Whats not normal is how we are all stuck with a 6 monthly reinstall of windows on top of itself. Maybe a rollback, and another hard reinstall, all automagicly taking care of your programs and data.

      The wonder is, that it doesn't leave more machines unusable.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Intel SSD owners rejoice!

    1. Tom 64
      Pint

      Intel SSD owners rejoice!

      I'm rejoicing. My Samsung just got a lot faster with the latest update.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why are MS' updates so shit ?

    I understand that MS cannot possibly ensure that their OS updates will work with all combinations of PC hardware.

    BUT, after decades of doing this, why can't they simply, clearly tell the user WHY the update has failed ?

    They expect us to wade through 45MB "human readable" log files to find a clue or run a special app to give another clue. And that app crashed on me.

    AND why can't they detect when updates have failed and DISABLE the automatic re-download and attempt at installing THE EXACT SAME, FAILED UPDATE, oVER AND OVER AGAIN ?!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why are MS' updates so shit ?

      Yes, but at least you get a helpful sad face now.

  6. ell.gol
    FAIL

    This is just one of the many problems caused by the April update. Avast av got completely crippled too by the new version of Windows. Just check the Avast forum, it's full of people claiming it has completely stopped working on their machines and all that after they had updated to the new version of Windows.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's pretty much par for the course with Avast! these days.

      Since they started stuffing it with bloat and popping up notifications all the fucking time it became worthless, and disappeared from all my machines.

      1. Bert 1
        Thumb Up

        Gaming mode

        Run Avast in "Gaming Mode"

  7. mark l 2 Silver badge
    FAIL

    It is not like SSD are a new technology that MS have had to re-write the OS to support. They worked under the previous version of Windows 10 yet somehow this 'feature update' breaks a previously functional system.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "It is not like SSD are a new technology that MS have had to re-write the OS to support. They worked under the previous version of Windows 10 yet somehow this 'feature update' breaks a previously functional system."

      Yes, because either it's a standard interface and so Windows should fall back to a generic driver, or the manufacture provides the driver using the Windows API. The latter can fail if the driver writer uses non-official APIs or MS changes the APIs without notice, neither of which should happen. Since other commentards have reports other SSD with similar issues, maybe it's MS changing the APIs in ways they thought might not damage anything.

      1. leexgx

        its quite annoying even basic things like sound cards don't work after a feature upgrade (some older sound blaster cards no longer work , max windows 10 version 1705 in 1803 stuff just braking )

        just don't understand why they have to tweak with the driver and software model that breaks stuff that has been working for over 6 months to 10 years fine (yes braking windows 10 compatible devices and software that has only just recently come out and MS blames the device or program maker for not following MS guidelines when MS keep on changing it between versions)

        i had to install Win10 LTSB on a one system because each new feature upgrade was causing new problems

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Because lot of that stuff that was written was shit . Remember 10 years ago in XP era programs that demanded to be ran Admin mode or it failed ? Hell to this day you still have software (bitttorent) That demands to be ran as Admin, not in admin mode. Bittorrent wont even install right if I'm not logged in as admin. MS allowed sloppy coding and use of undocumented API. windows 7 comes around and things changes. I have 32 bit software from N4.0 that runs fine on windows 10, yet software from the XP era shits it's self

          1. leexgx

            comments about drivers and stuff been made badly does not make sense

            a device that has been working on Vista, 7 and windows 8 has generally always worked, with windows 10 a Program or driver can break after a feature upgrade when it was working perfectly fine before

            why is MS changing the rules every single feature upgrade comes available, at this point MS is going to be forcing developers to go back to the old days where all support files are baked into program directory again (but this does not help old unsupported but perfectly working hardware from been broken by MS)

        2. Christian Berger

          It's a special thing about most closed platforms

          "just don't understand why they have to tweak with the driver and software model that breaks stuff that has been working"

          Essentially when you are writing software for the less traveled areas like device drivers, you will find some bugs in the API, either stuff not working as documented or stuff missing you can get via side effects.

          On a modern Free Software project you'd just submit a bug report the bug would be fixed within hours to days and you can get an experimental patch rather quickly. This doesn't work in commercial environments. There you cannot simply send something to another company. There is no public mailing list you can subscribe to and submit your bug report.

          So people make workarounds. If they are lucky, the workarounds will still work once the bug is fixed, if not the piece of software breaks.

          1. src

            Re: It's a special thing about most closed platforms

            My laptop is affected by this kernel bug reported over a year ago. No sign that anybody is interested in fixing it:

            https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=195471

            1. Christian Berger

              Re: It's a special thing about most closed platforms

              "No sign that anybody is interested in fixing it:"

              To be honest that does look a lot like a design problem of your laptop.

      2. leexgx

        if this install brakes on my system i going to be using LTSB after

        currently using windows 10 pro with it set to Semi-Annual (Not Targeted witch is CBB) 15 update delay + 120 days wait after its feature upgrade is available for CBB (Semi-Annual (Not Targeted)

        15 day delay is due to MS in the past releasing updates that break stuff

      3. Chronos

        maybe it's MS changing the APIs in ways they thought might not damage anything.

        FSVO "anything," as in "this is our massive pool of unwilling beta testers. Nothing mission critical here."

        1. Boothy

          @AC ...XP era programs that demanded to be ran Admin .

          One of the issues with a lot of XP era programs was that they were not following MS guidelines for NT platforms. Often being apps, or games, from Win 9* that had been ported across/tweaked to run in XP (or newer), or simply written by people who hadn't taken into account the differences between the old 9* platform, and NT OSs like XP.

          A common issue I've seen with a *lot* of older (or just badly written) programs (utils and legacy games), is when the program has config data (often in .ini files), and they put these in the programs installation dir, rather than where they should be, i.e. under user space (e.g. in AppData, or even Docs).

          The programs usually want to open these with write access, but as they are under the protected Program Files area, they need admin rights to do this under XP/Win7 etc..

          A simple work around is to install these programs to somewhere that isn't protected, like D:\Apps or D:\Games instead.

          Doesn't work with everything, but I've found quite a few old apps or games will stop asking for admin rights after doing this.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To say...

    To say Windows 1803 is not the best of Microsoft Updates, is an understatement.

    It's not very good at knowing how much disk space it needs to install this update, but > 20GB of free space on drive C: is a good ballpark, < 10GB isn't enough. Good luck with smaller SSDs.

    After 13 attempts it still didn't stop attempting to install itself, it's so persistent if it was a person, you'd take out an injunction against them, to stop them stalking you.

    Sausage Machine, Conveyer Belt ...the usual shite.

    1. Tom 35

      Re: To say...

      Just think of all the cheap windows 10 tablets with 60 GB SSDs...

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. Tom 35

    Looks like we have an MS fanboy

    Looks like someone downvoted every post.

    1. tirk
      Facepalm

      Re: Looks like we have an MS fanboy

      Two of them now - the entire MS QC team have been re-tasked to dealing with this it seems.

      1. Fungus Bob
        Devil

        Re: Looks like we have an MS fanboy

        Not the QC team, just SatNad and Gates.

        1. ChrisC Silver badge

          Re: Looks like we have an MS fanboy

          Naah, whilst I may not have have much admiration for Gates or Ballmer back in the day, I get the feeling they were far more in tune with what the OS meant to PC users than SatNad will ever hope to be, and that they'd be feeling a bit narked at how much damage is now being done to the reputation of Windows, so would find it hard to justify downvoting comments like these. SatNad OTOH, yes, I can all too easily imagine him sat quietly in his office, seething with rage at the thoughts of so many people completely failing to get onboard with his masterplan for Windows, clicking away on the downvote buttons every chance he gets...

          When I now find myself looking back on the Gates/Ballmer era I realise just how good we had it back then in comparison to today, and how good, relatively speaking compared with SatNad, they were to us as end users of their products. Windows was still something of an unholy mess, but at least when stuff got changed it largely seemed to be for the right reasons, and there was still a sense that MS under their leadership understood that the OS wasn't really something to be tinkered with on a whim.

          I find it really difficult to believe that SatNad has that same level of comprehension, therefore can't get why so many of us feel rightly miffed every time the sodding W10 update screen pops up and our hearts sink as we wonder what new mysteries await us once the update process has ended, and therefore has no compulsion to start steering Windows onto a different course to the one it's on right now, headed straight for the largest, most jagged hull-plate ripping, pile of rocks in existence, from where the only way is down...

  10. Nolveys
    Windows

    Just Had Fun With This

    A machine with a NVMe would download the Fall Creators Update, display the message "updating, do not turn off or reboot..." for half an hour and reboot. If the user stared at the screen at boot the error message "Something went wrong, but we won't tell you what" popped up for a split second before an odd, graphical pre-boot menu gave the option to boot normally. The process would then restart.

    It turned out that there's a problem which causes the BIOS SMART test to fail, even though the drive works fine. This is reported to the operating system which fails without saying what is going on.

    The problem can be "fixed" by disabling SMART in the BIOS. It sure would have been nice if the OS or BIOS had bothered to tell me what was wrong rather than having me aimlessly wondering the internet for hours and hours...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Just Had Fun With This

      You know that Win 10 is supposed to run with UEFI, not BIOS?

      1. Nolveys
        Windows

        Re: Just Had Fun With This

        You know that Win 10 is supposed to run with UEFI, not BIOS?

        Don't try to teach an old NolVeys new acronyms. Just replace every instance of BIOS in my post with "A giant bag of barely-functional binary blob shit".

  11. elvisimprsntr

    Precisely why I am still on Windows 7.

    Even then, I only run Windows in a NAS VM for the one application which the developer insists on using .NET. Everything else is either macOS or Linux.

    1. codejunky Silver badge

      @ elvisimprsntr

      I seriously dread having to upgrade from windows7. For anything not games related I use linux so that isnt a concern but I do keep a win7 partition just as a gaming machine. The only ray of light I saw was steam supporting linux and my single player stuff on wine. But I am not convinced all of my titles can be run on linux.

    2. Daniel 18

      "Even then, I only run Windows in a NAS VM for the one application which the developer insists on using .NET. Everything else is either macOS or Linux."

      Seems to me the last time I loaded something that wanted .net into WINE, it sent me away to download a .net package from the distribution repository... If you don't need a full VM, WINE may let you run it under Linux/WINE.

  12. cb7

    Space

    "Just think of all the cheap windows 10 tablets with 60 GB SSDs"

    Just think of all the cheap Windows 10 tablets with 32GB persistent storage.

    TFTFY

  13. Usermane

    Will be cheap ssd?

    I am looking for some cheap ssd for my laptop with Kubuntu, maybe will be lucky thanks to MS.

  14. MJI Silver badge

    This downdate is causing hell here

    And why our next system WILL be multi platform.

    Large custom written WIN32 application talking to a database server using various stuff over IP (I write the software but we buy in a popular server with native ISAM access and very well emulated SQL access).

    Vertical market so big fish in a puddle.

    Anyway the LAN changes have buggered up the data server client and stopped it working, and since SAP bought Sybase support has been ruined.

  15. d3rrial

    Linux woes

    And here I thought the bi-weekly sudo pacman -Syu was scary.

    Ha!

  16. Eddy42

    "Redmond is also attempting to block the devices trying the update again"

    Am I the only one who thinks it's amusing that Microsoft are now trying to find a way to block Windows updates?

    The entire user-base has been trying to find a way since the release of Windows 10 - if you find a way Microsoft could you let the community know the secret...

    1. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge

      Re: "Redmond is also attempting to block the devices trying the update again"

      The main problem would be to identify the hardware which has the issue, and to do it without error.

      Once it is done, it only needs to be added to the database which is used by the Win10 setup to check for compatibility issues when applying upgrades.

      And for those who want to check their system compatibility before upgrading, once you have downloaded the full setup:

      SETUP.EXE /Auto Upgrade /Quiet /NoReboot /Compat ScanOnly

      Results will be available in C:\$Windows.~bt\Sources\Panther\ScanResult.xml, or in the *compat*.xml files in that same folder.

    2. majjinbuuhoo

      if you find a way Microsoft could you let the community know the secret...

      You can do a couple of things actually.. change your connection to metered, disable the service by hitting Windows, type services.msc, right click and open as administrator and then right click Windows Update and change it from Automatic to Disabled, you can also use Group Policy unless you're using a Home Edition.

      If the update is already downloaded and prompting you repeatedly for another failed attempt, do some or all of the above steps and then to delete the downloaded updates right click to run as administrator and open Cmd (command prompt) and type:

      net stop wuauserv

      cd %Windir%\SoftwareDistribution

      del /f /s /q Download

      net start wuauserv

      If you have an issue with net start wuauserv working from doing everything listed, you need to restart Windows Update Service in services.msc again, but I'd only worry about that if you're trying to see if the update will work after a second go. I had to do a fresh install on my SSD and copied everything from Windows.old to my fresh installation and then ran a backup of my registry settings I had made with CCleaner before wiping it.. good times.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If only.....

    MS had some sort of way of gathering thousands and thousands of data points from millions and millions of individual users to help stop this happening.

    Why haven't they just turned some sort of telemetry on? Heck that could even default it to on and make it impossible to completely turn off

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If only.....

      The telemetry is for augmenting their AI and for collecting data to sell.

      It's not for helping you to troubleshoot.

  18. JJKing
    Unhappy

    Stand in the far queue Winshit 10

    I purchased a new Dell in their Boxing Day sale and of course it came with Winshit 10. I have managed to get everything running on Windows 7 except for the video driver which is a tad annoying as it doesn't give me the same video quality as the Winshit 10 driver and the ones that purport to be a Windows 7 ones detects the wrong chipset and fails to install. Thanks AMD/Radeon.

    After the last Update I am now getting a popup telling me that I have Unsupported Hardware and your system will miss important security updates. Guess they will not be supporting Windows 7 until 2020. Now I have to Google how to stop this annoying popup from appearing. Thanks MicroPricks. Yes, I would have installed a Linux flavour but Dell in it's infantine stupidity has not released any Linux drivers. Damn shame coz the laptop is fairly well speced and runs faster on a hobbled Windows 7 setup than the WInshit 10 one.

    1. Carl D

      Re: Stand in the far queue Winshit 10

      "After the last Update I am now getting a popup telling me that I have Unsupported Hardware and your system will miss important security updates."

      Easy enough to get around. Couple of ways actually. Easiest for me was to use the Simplix Pack which conveniently doesn't include the checking update that blocks Windows Update for new processors. Also doesn't include all the telemetry updates.

      I've been running a "Windows 7 Unsupported" 7th generation Kaby Lake on Windows 7 for nearly a year now. The Gigabyte motherboard I'm using has Windows 7 drivers and even has newer ones on their website.

      I can go to Windows Update and see the "Windows is up to date" message. I guess Microsoft decided not to push too hard with this seeing as I'm sure they've been sailing close to class action lawsuit territory after their borderline illegal GWX campaign (which is STILL ongoing, in my opinion).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Stand in the far queue Winshit 10

        "I'm sure they've been sailing close to class action lawsuit territory after their borderline illegal GWX campaign (which is STILL ongoing, in my opinion"

        We still have Windows 7 updates set to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them". We've never installed KB2952664 'That fucking GWX update" and gets hidden every time.

        KB2952664 again tried to install this month. That must be about the 20th time this update has been hidden (to prevent install) and reissued by Microsoft.

      2. elgarak1

        Re: Stand in the far queue Winshit 10

        My job is to produce things, using th computer as a tool. I get paid to deliver text files, image files etc.

        I do NOT get paid to dive into the innards of the OS and waste time to find workarounds to get hardware working or get updates to apply. This is lost income for my freelance business of one person.

        Currently, the only economic way to do my work is to use a Mac. Sure there's a high initial investment, and there may be some hardware issue that may take me down a bit, but in the long run it's lightyears better than Windows, because the everyday behavior of the OS does get in my way of doing my paid jobs a LOT less.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Stand in the far queue Winshit 10

      For me, even the simple, basic stuff is annoying on Win10.

      For example, the incessant attempts to hijack file extensions. Reinstalling Irfanview (64-bit) on my machine borked the custom icons of image files and made Windows Photos the default image viewer.

      I had to go to Advanced Settings, choose the default program, then launch Irfanview in admin mode and select the Icons Plugin. Finally, I have to right-click on Desktop, view Medium icons.

      No such problems with Win 7 (or Win Vista, which I consider to be okay after SP2).

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How sad, Microsoft and Intel used to be the best of friends.

    I guess none of those 'Insiders' have an Intel SSD on their test rigs?

  20. Jaap Aap

    I think this might be something driver-related. On Windows 7 the 6000p uses the Windows NVMe driver, while other Intel NVMe drives (the 7600p for instance) use the intel driver.

    Someone on the win-raid forum has modified the intel driver to also include the 6000p. It is self-signed, so with a few imported certificates it can work. I have not tested this, because I'm using Windows 7.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well...Fedora 28 (just out) is working fine here.....

    .....on two HP machines, a Toshiba and an Acer. This lot includes a 32GB eMMC drive and a PNY SSD. No probs at all with the four updates. Just saying.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm running a Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB as my Windows 10 drive, and I've had to repair it at least 5 times during the last two weeks (not even once before 1803).

    Large file copies sometimes hang and one by one the other running processes subsequently freeze. The machine becomes unresponsive and either BSODs with CRITICAL PROCESS DIED, or I have to use reset button. Sometimes the reset will not boot, and I have to power down the machine completely to get it to load.

    The above sometimes corrupts the SSD and I have to fix that before it boots properly.

    I've tried a complete reinstall, inplace and after reformat, but the problem continues.

    I've checked memory, the SSD and its' firmware, my HDDs, my PSU and everything else I can think of. All that's left to blame is build 1803.

    The only hardware issue I have in Device Manager is that my onboard Realtek driver saya it's working properly, but I get no sound. Using the Microsoft High Definition Driver works, but I've had to jump through hoops to get it to persist. (I've not tried the Realtek build 1709 driver), but expect that to work since it did before.

    I've upgraded all the Device Drivers manually to latest versions, mostly Intel. (My Asus Prime 270-K is frunning an Intel CPU).

    Whatever the SSD issue is, it's not just Intel and Tochiba SSDs getting borked by build 1803.

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