Intel says STOP installing firmware updates

In another stunning announcement, Intel now says that you should NOT install firmware updates. No specific word on Surface devices yet, but I bet the Jan. 10 updates are suspect, as well. Of course, if you have Automatic Update turned on, your Surface device is probably already updated.

Computerworld Woody on Windows

UPDATE: In response to an anonymous post here, I re-read the Intel announcement, and it isn’t clear (to me) if the halt has been called just for Broadwell and Haswell chips, or for all of Intel’s product line. Here’s what the official announcement says:

Updated Jan. 22

We have now identified the root cause of the reboot issue impacting Broadwell and Haswell platforms, and made good progress in developing a solution to address it. Based on this, we are updating our guidance for customers and partners:

• We recommend that OEMs, Cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors and end users stop deployment of current versions on the below platforms, as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior.
• We also ask that our industry partners focus efforts on testing early versions of the updated solution for Broadwell and Haswell we started rolling out this weekend, so we can accelerate its release. We expect to share more details on timing later this week.
• For those concerned about system stability while we finalize the updated solutions, we are also working with our OEM partners on the option to utilize a previous version of microcode that does not display these issues, but removes the Variant 2 (Spectre) mitigations. This would be delivered via a BIOS update, and would not impact mitigations for Variant 1 (Spectre) and Variant 3 (Meltdown).

We believe it is important for OEMs and our customers to follow this guidance for all of the specified platforms listed below, as they may demonstrate higher than expected  reboots and unpredictable system behavior.  The progress we have made in identifying a root cause for Haswell and Broadwell will help us address issues on other platforms. Please be assured we are working quickly to address these issues.

Then there’s a link to this list of Intel products, which includes Coffee Lake, Kaby Lake, Skylake, Broadwell, Haswell, Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge processors.

Clear as mud.

The spontaneous rebooting problem extends beyond Haswell and Broadwell. As Intel said on Jan. 17:

we have determined that similar behavior occurs on other products in some configurations, including Ivy Bridge-, Sandy Bridge-, Skylake-, and Kaby Lake-based platforms.

So it isn’t clear if the “Belay that order” order applies just to Haswell and Broadwell, or to Haswell, Broadwell, Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge, Skylake and Kaby Lake as well.