Serious Bug found in Core 2 Duo, Intel and Microsoft release patch

[imported_Dekard]

When Intel and Microsoft don't want to say what its about, I get worried since it affects sooo many computers.

From Digg:

Serious Bug found in Core 2 Duo, Intel and Microsoft release patch

So, the story is that some engineers at Dell found an issue with their servers and started talking to Intel and Microsoft. A huge bug was found in the Core 2 Duo and they released a patch for Windows to fix it. Its being called a 'reliability update', YA RIGHT! Anyway, there's a link to the Microsoft patch page at the bottom of the article.

 

[MrChad]

Dell released a few BIOS updates for their Core 2 Duo platforms a month or so ago. The update was labeled critical and the release notes mentioned a microcode update. I wonder if that's the same issue?

 

[xtknight]

I wonder if that's the cause of my freeze-ups.

Doubt it, but isn't the "TLB" a widely used and crucial function for memory management or am I thinking of something else?

What's the deal here? Updates only for Windows? So you download the Windows binary and it updates the microcode of your CPU?

A bit confusing but it seems the patch replaces Update.sys. I'm guessing on the next Windows reboot, Windows probes your CPU's microcode and then updates it according to the code currently in Update.sys.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: xtknight
I wonder if that's the cause of my freeze-ups.

Doubt it, but isn't the "TLB" a widely used and crucial function for memory management or am I thinking of something else?

What's the deal here? Updates only for Windows? So you download the Windows binary and it updates the microcode of your CPU?

A bit confusing but it seems the patch replaces Update.sys. I'm guessing on the next Windows reboot, Windows probes your CPU's microcode and then updates it according to the code currently in Update.sys.

Yea, the TLB is pretty important Not clear how wide spread the issue is.

"Intel has provided a microcode update as a critical software fix. This Intel microcode update addresses an improper Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) invalidation that may result in unpredictable system behavior such as system hangs or incorrect data. OEM's are making available a system BIOS upgrade that integrates a new version of this Intel microcode to address this potential but extremely rare issue. While the occurrence of this issue is extremely rare, OEM's strongly recommends upgrading the system BIOS to an updated version. Intel has indicated that the microcode update has no known measurable performance impact and provides a complete and comprehensive resolution to this issue."

While the implications of the issue are difficult to quantify, any of the following symptoms can occur:

The system may stop responding to keyboard or mouse input.
A system operating in a Microsoft Windows environment may generate a blue screen.
A system operating in a Linux environment may generate a kernel panic.

(This was from a post on Rage3d)

 

[Ryland]

I just updated my bios today because of this issue. I wonder if it could be related to the NMI Memory corruption error that a slew of people have seen with Core Duo 2 laptops.

 

[xtknight]

Updating my BIOS from Gigabyte would do the same thing then (if they decided to include the microcode update)? I think I'd rather do that.

 

[aCynic2]

When they say E4000/E6000, are they talking about the series, to include E6600?

 

[EarthwormJim]

Originally posted by: aCynic2
When they say E4000/E6000, are they talking about the series, to include E6600?

Yes they mean the series.

 

[Csst]

I own a X6800... I think I'm safe from this. I don't see my CPU listed.

 

[Chunkee]

AMD

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

Originally posted by: Chunkee
AMD

This reminds me of the floating point bug in some of the early Pentiums, but appears a bit more serious.

 

[BFG10K]

The system may stop responding to keyboard or mouse input.

I've had that happen to me a couple of times. One time I was in a game and it seemed to be running fine but I lost all input control. I thought it was an nVidia driver problem but perhaps not.

Anyway I'm now running the latest BIOS for my motherboard so hopefully I won't have any more such issues.

 

[redbeard1]

INQ