Gee, I am sorry I got it backwordsHi,
No idea. The first thing that was fixed (by MS) was the Meltdown mitigation. Then you either updated your bios/efi when made avaivalble through OEM etc. Or you installed the KB if you were running one of the cpus it patched .
Other than that ??
What are you using to check against vulnerability ?
Cheers,
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that the microcode by itself provides protection against Spectre Variant 2. I think the protection needs to be enabled in Windows. So even if you have the BIOS/UEFI loading the microcode, I think you could still potentially lose protection when upgrading.
Just a quick note to share a possibly helpful trick for those trying to update microcode on older PCs (Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge CPUs, in particular). Because Lenovo does not support Windows 10 on my two Sandy Bridge laptops -- a T520 notebook and an X 220 Tablet -- the company's Windows Flash utility will not run while the OS is up and working. However, Lenovo does make an ISO available for bootable media that will run the BIOS/UEFI flash from an alternate boot into DOS. That's what I had to do to update those particular PCs. Along the way, I made a couple of mistakes whose recitation will hopefully spare readers in similar situations from repeating them unnecessarily:
1. I found the free utility FreeISOBurner does the job of creating bootable optical quite nicely. For whatever reason, I did not succeed in creating bootable USB Flash drivers from the ISO file.
2. When booting to DOS legacy boot is the only valid method. I had to switch the UEFI boot in my X220 from "UEFI only" to "Both" (supports either MBR or UEFI boot) before the machine would boot to the DVD with the BIOS Flash utility aboard. I had to do something similar with the Asrock Z97 Killer Fatal1ty desktop also, though Asrock's Instant Flash utility didn't require a boot to DOS along the way.
HTH,
--Ed--
Last edited by EdTittel; 04 Apr 2018 at 09:51. Reason: Add Title
The assumption was that Microsoft would provide the microcode updates for older processors (i.e., pre Skylake). But do we actually know if Microsoft is going to do that? Maybe they won't.
Hi,
MS can only do so for the MCU's it receives from Intel.
Cheers,
Hi all
The Skip Ahead Update, Build 17369, is using the latest microcode from Intel on both my i7-2600 and i7-920.
The Inspectre now shows that both Spectre and Meltdown as fixed on both processors.
HWinfo also shows the microcode is updated on both to match Intel March guidance.
The i7-920 is labeled as "Stopped" in the Intel April's Intel guidance yet HWinfo shows it has been updated by Build 17369!
Microcode updates from Intel for other processors have been available for a while now. I highly doubt that Intel hasn't provided them to Microsoft.
Strange. I wonder if it's a false positive. Have you checked using the PowerShell script?
I checked the microcode revision in the BIOS and after booting in HWInfo, before updating from Windows 10 FCU. Windows 10 SCU is updating the microcode after boot! There is also a drop in SSD 4K single-threaded I/O in CrystalDiakMark, lost 10% off reads and 30% off writes. Both machine working well and very responsive.
I got brave and grabbed 1803-17133.1 ISO using the MCT /SelfHost with the products.cab(xml) and updated both my HP PC's (see specs).
Desktop PC - i7-7700k (Kaby Lake S)
1. InSpectre - says I'm no longer protected against Spectre (KB4090007 was protecting against Spectre)
2. BIOS - latest available from 1/2018 ... hopefully HP will release a BIOS update or MS will release a KB for 1803
Laptop - i7-4710hq (Haswell)
1. InSpectre - say's I'm protected
2. BIOS - latest available from 3/2018 ... which addressed Spectre.
Note: No other patches applied to either (ie. cpumcupdate, etc)
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