A Heads' Up Regarding BIOS and Windows 10 April Updates

Subtropic Pixel

Hello:

My 2 year old Windows 10 machine's Gigabyte motherboard needed a BIOS update before it would accept the April Update.  FYI for you all.

Oddly enough, my 7 year old laptop did not need a BIOS update, and that's also a good thing because the vendor, Asus, hasn't put out a BIOS update for about 5 years.

Also, a  pro tip:  BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP!

The only way I could get my main machine back was to restore the Windows 10 partition from a backup taken prior to the update.  Luckily for me, that was only 8 hours in the past.  The last incremental backup was taken about 4 pm, then I came by around 5 and started the update, then went off to watch old "My Mother the Car" episodes and didn't come back until about 10 pm.  I noticed a failure dialog on the screen and after that, the machine would get stuck in an endless reboot cycle until I decided to recover from a prior backup.

I use Macrium Reflect, and would swear by it for anybody worried about reliability.

Anyhow, after the restore, I started Windows, checked it out, then took a fresh backup before applying the BIOS update and finally re-trying the Windows 10 April update. 

Per some light reading on the matter, I've since learned that some UEFI motherboards need to have BOTH the Windows updates AND a BIOS update in order to correct Spectre and/or Meltdown.  In case anybody is interested in learning more, here's one informative article:  Link.  Or you can google with the terms "bios update spectre meltdown".

All is well here now.  Happy reading, and do make sure your computer is being backed up.