 | By Woody Leonhard Microsoft’s patch for Intel’s Core 2 Duo chips, patch 936357, is locking up people’s computers and making them unbootable. If you have Automatic Updates turned on, or you recently applied all of Microsoft’s recent Patch Tuesday updates, you probably have the bad patch, so follow along with me on what to do about it. |
Just another Automatic Updates debacle?
Microsoft’s 936357 patch, with a security level of “Important” and billed as a “microcode reliability update that improves the reliability of systems that use Intel processors,” has been wreaking havoc. Although the patch appears to be directed at buggy Core 2 Duo chips (Microsoft hasn’t released enough information to know for sure), many people with older chips got the patch anyway.
There have been reports of locked-up computers in TechArena, mysterious system slowdowns described in the EVGA forums, and discussions of how to fix Blue Screens of Death caused by the patch in Microsoft’s own newsgroups.
The really strange part about the reported problems is this: as far as I can tell, the patch should only affect Core 2 Duo systems that are using the E4000, E6000, T5000 and T7000 chips. But people who are reporting the problems are running many different kinds of machines.
Here’s another part of the mystery: the patch is offered by Windows Update and Microsoft Update for Pentium 4 machines, including several Pentium 4s that I myself own. But — unless Microsoft is changing microcode in Pentium 4 machines — that doesn’t make any sense.
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