While some hiccups may be expected with the release of a major operating system update, the Windows 10 April 2018 Update has had a somewhat rockier start as far as its rollout has been concerned. While the recurrence of specific issues can be stemmed by blocking the update from being offered, as was the case for a number of Alienware systems identified last week, others such as the intermittent freezing of Google Chrome present a different challenge as far as handling is concerned.
It now looks like another problem has come out of the woodwork, specifically concerning the Intel SSD 600p and SSD Pro 6000p series of storage devices. These NVMe drives have been running into issues with the April 2018 Update, with Microsoft citing "a know (sic) incompatibility that may cause performance and stability issues".
While the root cause of this issue has not yet been disclosed, it's possible that a firmware or driver bug may be the underlying culprit given a number of previous issues discovered under Linux, such as power state management and command queue prioritization. While these problems were reported against the Intel SSD DC P3100, workarounds applied to the Linux NVMe driver to mitigate these problems also applied to the 600p given that they share the same PCI identifier. It's also believed that the SSD E 6000p may also be affected given that it leverages the same controller and firmware as the 600p.
Until a solution is made available from either Intel or Microsoft, it's advised that systems incorporating the abovementioned SSDs avoid manually upgrading to the latest version of Windows 10. In the meantime, Microsoft has blocked the April 2018 Update from being offered to such systems via Windows Update.
Source: Microsoft, Windows Latest via AnandTech
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