firmware

A fresh line of forensic work from community labs suggests the wave of disappearing and allegedly “bricked” NVMe SSDs that alarmed Windows users in August may not be a mass Windows regression at all, but instead a narrower supply‑chain and firmware‑provenance problem: pre‑release (engineering)...

Windows 11 users and system builders were jolted in mid‑August when a flurry of reports described NVMe SSDs suddenly disappearing, corrupting files or becoming completely inaccessible during large, sustained writes — an incident initially blamed on Microsoft’s August cumulative update...

Phison’s pre-release controller firmware has emerged as the most plausible explanation for the wave of NVMe SSD “vanishing” and bricking reports that followed Microsoft’s mid‑August Windows 11 cumulative updates — a finding that reframes the incident from a suspected OS regression into a...

Microsoft’s August Windows 11 patch is no longer the prime suspect in the recent wave of “vanishing” NVMe drives — mounting evidence points to pre‑release controller firmware and supply‑chain provenance, not the KB5063878/KB5062660 updates themselves, as the root trigger in the cases...

Phison has publicly acknowledged and replicated a key finding first raised by the PCDIY community: a wave of disappearing and allegedly “bricked” NVMe SSDs linked in timing to Windows 11’s August cumulative update (KB5063878) appears to have been driven, in at least some test cases, by...

Phison’s latest public testing and fresh community forensics have changed the tone of an urgent story that began as “Windows 11 is killing SSDs” and quickly morphed into a complex investigation at the intersection of OS updates, controller firmware, and supply‑chain quirks — with no single party...

A cluster of community test benches and vendor statements now point to a supply‑chain firmware issue — not a Windows code regression — as the most plausible explanation for the mid‑August reports of NVMe drives “vanishing” during large sequential writes after the Windows 11 August cumulative...

The investigation into a wave of disappearing and allegedly “bricked” NVMe SSDs that followed Microsoft’s August Windows 11 security rollup has taken a new turn: community researchers now say the problem was triggered not by Microsoft’s patch but by pre-release engineering firmware present on a...

Microsoft’s August cumulative (KB5063878) has been tied to a narrow but serious class of SSD failures and strange slowdowns — and while community researchers now point to pre‑release engineering firmware on some drives as a plausible trigger, the broader evidence remains mixed and important...

A cluster of community test benches and vendors dug into one of this summer’s more alarming update chases: after Microsoft’s August 12, 2025 cumulative for Windows 11 24H2 (KB5063878) some users reported NVMe drives disappearing mid‑write and, in a minority of cases, returning corrupted or...

Microsoft and Phison have pushed back hard against a wave of social-media claims that the latest Windows 11 cumulative update is “bricking” NVMe SSDs — but the episode exposes a brittle edge case in modern storage stacks, a gap between telemetry and forensic proof, and practical steps every...

BornCity’s latest dispatch raises a subtle but important question: did Microsoft quietly neutralize the wave of SSD failures reported from Japan after the August 2025 Windows 11 24H2 roll‑out, or did the alarm simply fade after vendors and Redmond concluded they could not reproduce a systemic...

The move from legacy BIOS/MBR rigs to UEFI/GPT systems — and the mandatory flip of Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 switches — has leapt out of corporate IT and into mainstream PC gaming and pro-grade Windows workflows, creating a new compatibility baseline players and professionals must meet to run the...

Microsoft’s audit of the August Windows 11 cumulative update has closed one chapter of an unusually noisy storage scare, but it has left behind a tangle of reproducible community tests, partial vendor confirmations, and unanswered forensic questions that IT teams and power users should still...

CISA’s KEV catalog grew again this week with the addition of two high‑risk router flaws tied to active exploitation, underscoring an uncomfortable reality for IT teams: inexpensive consumer and small‑office routers remain a prime target for adversaries and can pose outsized risk to enterprise...

Microsoft’s latest push to force better USB-C behavior on Windows 11 PCs is a welcome — and long overdue — attempt to end a years‑long era of port confusion, flaky charging, and bewildering compatibility problems that have left users juggling cables and vendor support forums. The company is...

Microsoft is pushing PC makers to stop treating USB Type-C as a cosmetic port and to implement the platform-level hooks Windows 11 needs to deliver consistent, useful notifications when Type‑C connections behave unexpectedly. The company’s guidance — now baked into Windows’ hardware requirements...

Modern PC shooters are raising the bar: several recent AAA titles now refuse to run on Windows 10 unless Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 are enabled, forcing many players to move from legacy BIOS/MBR setups to a UEFI/GPT configuration before they can even launch the game. Background / Overview The...

Microsoft says its August Windows 11 security update (KB5063878) is not behind the recent wave of reports alleging SSDs and HDDs have been rendered inaccessible or corrupted, but the episode has exposed gaps in forensic clarity and left many users mistrustful of a conclusion drawn without a...

Microsoft and Phison have now all but closed the book on the late‑August panic: after weeks of community reports, lab reproductions and headlines warning that Windows 11 24H2’s August cumulative (KB5063878) was “bricking” SSDs, thorough vendor and Microsoft testing found no reproducible link...