Windows Client Guidance against speculative execution vulnerabilities

XYZ.
Whilst I understand your frustration.....have you never made a mistake?

No enterprise can succeed without trial and error.....the Insider programme for example is already aiding M$ in their quest to try and get the perfect O/S, yet even with the extra help from millions of Insiders worldwide, it will never be foolproof.

Computerisation has just too many variables.

johngalt said:

Agreed. The FUD is trying to ascribed blame for this - there is no blame to be ascribed here for the vulnerabilities themselves.

Anything else (responses to / lack of responses, badly-coded stop-gap measures, the not-so-very-innocuous sale of corporate stock) - yeah, all those can have fault attributed to them to any one person or group or corporation. But trying to hold anyone liable (not libel ) for the vulnerabilities themselves is ludicrous at best, and, really, utterly ridiculous.

But Josey makes a point above me - I'm also in a similar situation - my CPU controller Chipset family, the X58, was developed over 10 years ago. It was first released later that same year.

I purchased my board in mid 2011, after lightning took out my then current machine, and being a Master's student with already 1 year of data for my thesis gathered, I needed to build something quickly. I'm still using that same motherboard, CPU and RAM (and case) as my daily driver, the one that runs Insider builds, and VMs (every other component is newer - except possibly the Blu-Ray burner - I honestly don't remember anymore).

The last BIOS released for that machine was released before I even bought it. On top of that, one of the team engineers at eVGA has specifically stated that this (and other older 'legacy' family boards are awaiting BIOS source code directly from Intel in order to issue an update). https://forums.evga.com/FindPost/2749683

Until that happens, I am pretty much .... out of luck. And others with legacy boards like this (and even much, much newer boards, I've already started hearing rumors of boards as new as 4 years old are being denied any new BIOS / UEFI updates) in pretty much the same boat, well, you can see how it's rather hard to take your advice at just face value and have everything patched - because, well, we really can't have everything patched.

So, it would truly be nice if Windows forced a microcode update via Windows Update to our machines because, at this point, Intel is probably not going to provide BIOS source code from 5 years ago, let alone 10....

I have a Intel i7 960 @3.20 Ghz CPU with a MSI-58x-E MOBO that I doubt MSI will update. So my plan is to use my current PC till this problem is resolved and then build or purchase a new Machine. The Video By Steve Gibson is quite good and I do not believe it is FUD as you call it.

fdegrove said:

Hi,

It is possible to load microcode in Windows through third party software (from VMWare for instance) but I've never seen any evidence of microcode being updated by Windows itself, not ever. If it does then I'd like to see evidence of it. Microcode that's incompatible with the cpu present won't load. You can't flash a bios with an incompatible bios if the flashing programme is written properly. Ditto for MC updates.

Cheers,

You can Check what version MicroCode Windows 10 is Using , and it may not be the one in the Bios , the CPU will use whichever one it Deems Newer automatically apparently ...... eg the OS's version maybe different...
.
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I found this Info ...surprisingly in a Post at FireFox as version 57 has some issues on Mobile Broadwell Chips..

I am on 3A not the Bios version which is 38 and 3A is the currently recommend one from Intel. ( see PDF below )

Thought I'd add this How Too here for Others use too :
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To see the processor micro architecture and which microcode revision is in use by Windows ,

from an admin command prompt run this command :

reg query HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DESCRIPTION\System\CentralProcessor\0

--The line labeled "VendorIdentifier" shows the CPU vendor (GenuineIntel for Intel or AuthenticAMD for AMD).

--The line labeled "Identifier" gives the microarchitecture as three numbers: "Family", "Model" and "Stepping".
-----These are relevant in identifying if a particular CPU bug may be relevant to the CPU in your computer.---

--The line labeled "Update Revision" shows the current microcode revision (for the particular microarchitecture) with zeros on both sides.
------ For example, Update Revision REG_BINARY 000000001E000000 means that the revision is 1E (hexadecimal).

--The line labeled "Previous Update Revision" shows the microcode revision loaded from BIOS.

See Sample Image below.........

***You can also Open RegEdit and goto the specified Reg. Key above and look without using the Command Prompt.

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fdegrove said:

Hi,

Wrote a small batch file so the query can easily be repeated without having to remember the code:

Using Notepad as text editor you can then save it as a .bat file that you can run as Admin.

Cheers,

Sweet ! .......... thanks.

If you use NotePad++ you can save it directly as a .bat no need to use " " eg "mc.bat" to save it, ( to stop Notepad adding .txt eg mc.bat.txt)

or just download my slightly modified Bat File below to your Desktop and right Click> Open