Windows 11 24H2 is causing headaches, BSODs for some Western Digital SSD owners

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Alfonso Maruccia

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Facepalm: Microsoft began rolling out Windows 11 24H2 this month. The major update introduces several AI features and improvements, along with some new bugs affecting unlucky users, in this specific case, PC owners with SSDs manufactured by Western Digital.

Update: WD has released a firmware fix for SSDs affected by Windows 11 24H2 BSODs. Download WD's Dashboard software as instructed here for more.

Microsoft is busy rolling out the scheduled release of Windows 24H2, but some users have already encountered major compatibility and stability issues after installing the upgrade. In recent days, owners of NVMe SSDs from Western Digital have flooded the company's forums with reports of bugs and blue screen of death crashes.

Some users report that rolling back to the previous version of Windows 11 (23H2) seems to resolve the crashes. Most of the problems appear to be related to WD Black SN770 and WD Blue SN580 SSDs, which lack DRAM-based cache.

These drives rely on the Host Memory Buffer feature introduced in version 1.2 of the NVMe standard. HMB allows storage devices to use the system's main DRAM as cache, improving performance on cache-less drives. Western Digital drives typically allocate 64MB of host RAM via HMB, but Windows 24H2 appears to be reserving up to 200MB for caching I/O operations, potentially causing the instability.

The additional 136MB of cache memory allocation has caused WD's SSDs to behave erratically, forcing the entire operating system into a BSOD loop. Windows 23H2 correctly allocates 64MB of RAM to DRAM-less SSDs, suggesting that the issue was introduced with Microsoft's latest Windows 11 upgrade.

Since replacing traditional internal testing procedures with the Windows Insider program, Microsoft developers have increasingly used PC users as unpaid beta testers for Windows. Sometimes, a Windows 11 update may significantly boost performance – such as doubling file copy speeds on specific file systems – but at other times, "preview" updates can lead to widespread BSODs, crashes, and other "unintended" issues.

For SSD owners encountering blue screens after upgrading to 24H2, there's no need to panic. A registry-based workaround is available to limit HMB allocation to 64MB or disable it entirely. While this workaround might negatively impact performance during heavy file transfers, it should return Windows 24H2 to a semi-stable state after restarting the system.

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Windows 11 24H2 is causing headaches, BSODs for some Western Digital SSD owners

 
I’m running windows insider beta channeland as of now, it refuses to update my Pc to 24H2. I’m glad it’s holding me back as these bugs are worked out.
 
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How hard for Microsoft to set up a real world AI testing facility =100 of most common builds and 400 edge cases, then have bots installing , running multiple apps, lost of tabs etc . Plus do known problematic stuff, too much protection apps , badly installing and upgrading drivers over old drivers , codecs , runtime libraries etc , slightly wrong drivers.
Probably for a user only opens chrome with a few tabs , plays candy crush , only one drive etc must be rare to get BSOD.
 
kiwigraeme said:
How hard for Microsoft to set up a real world AI testing facility =100 of most common builds and 400 edge cases, then have bots installing , running multiple apps, lost of tabs etc . Plus do known problematic stuff, too much protection apps , badly installing and upgrading drivers over old drivers , codecs , runtime libraries etc , slightly wrong drivers.
Probably for a user only opens chrome with a few tabs , plays candy crush , only one drive etc must be rare to get BSOD.
Click to expand...
Their automated testing is much more than that. The problem is that it's virtual and can never duplicate all the oddities of the component mixed. Real testing on actual PCs ended when Satya let their 10,000 QA engineers go almost ten years ago. They have no interest in bringing back more people. Agile programming with Insider testing is not going away.
 
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Nanochip said:
I’m running windows insider beta channeland as of now, it refuses to update my Pc to 24H2. I’m glad it’s holding me back as these bugs are worked out.
Click to expand...
Use

https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/

Get the media creation tool from MS, generate an autounattend.xml and you can remove anything you like inlcuidng TPM, check, copilot, Edge, etc etc. The xml file is read during install and you don't have to intervene unless you want to setup things like wifi during the install.
 
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seeprime said:
Their automated testing is much more than that. The problem is that it's virtual and can never duplicate all the oddities of the component mixed. Real testing on actual PCs ended when Satya let their 10,000 QA engineers go almost ten years ago. They have no interest in bringing back more people. Agile programming with Insider testing is not going away.
Click to expand...
cheers for the info
 
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Karlos95 said:
With every MS update, pushes me closer to Linux
Click to expand...

Why don't you change now then? Sadly Linux is pretty trash if you want to use high-end hardware for playing AAA games. Most games will be a headache to get runnning well and many won't even run. Tons of multiplayer games won't work due to anti cheat as well.

Playing older games and indie games, is another thing and generally many will work, however most won't perform even close to what you see on a Windows install.
 
Confimed that my Random 4k reads/writes are lower than when I was on Windows 10 no setting changes. Tried everything cant recover. 990 pro 2TB random reads were at 104mbps and random writes at 340mbps. In windows 11 24H2 I'm getting 99mbps 4k random read and 252mbps random writes. That is a 25.88% reduction in random writes and 4.8% reduction in random reads on an AMD system. What an upgrade, tried disabling windows defender, VBS, core isolation,hyper V and storage service. No change.
 
Brawndo said:
It's still on insider. If you are not a tester you have no business there.
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No it’s released to public, it’s being released in waves through Windows Update but you can literally get the media creation tool right now and it’s 24H2 build.

Did a fresh install last night on my own personal and my misses PC’s, 24H2 has been rock solid so far.
 
I am waiting for the day Linux buys out Microsoft and puts us all out of our misery ....... lol
 
My counter argument is that if the controller firmware can't handle this weird situation, then the firmware is broken as well.
 
This has been a chaos from Microsoft update team. Why are they even getting PAID? Something it feels, they do it on purpose so consumers would go for expensive new components from dealers that these Microsoft technicians might have collaborated with. Microsoft is just another LOCAL company with bunch of Illiterate and Incompetent staff
 
Felusy said:
Why don't you change now then? Sadly Linux is pretty trash if you want to use high-end hardware for playing AAA games. Most games will be a headache to get runnning well and many won't even run. Tons of multiplayer games won't work due to anti cheat as well.

Playing older games and indie games, is another thing and generally many will work, however most won't perform even close to what you see on a Windows install.
Click to expand...
I don't game on my PC, that's for work.
 
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wiak said:
On this episode of Windows Update, We mess up your SSD, tune in next time for more mayham
Click to expand...

Except that Western Digital’s faulty firmware caused this issue.

Windows 11 24H2 merely exposed the bug in the SSD’s firmware.

Windows 11 24H2 is giving the SSD 200 MB HBM that the SSD itself requested.

The SSD can’t handle the 200 MB HBM memory that it requested and crashes.
 
Nanochip said:
I’m running windows insider beta channeland as of now, it refuses to update my Pc to 24H2. I’m glad it’s holding me back as these bugs are worked out.
Click to expand...

It’s not a bug in Windows 11 24H2.

It’s a bug in Western Digital’s firmware.

Windows 11 24H2 merely exposes the bug in Western Digital’s firmware.
 
Felusy said:
Why don't you change now then? Sadly Linux is pretty trash if you want to use high-end hardware for playing AAA games. Most games will be a headache to get runnning well and many won't even run. Tons of multiplayer games won't work due to anti cheat as well.

Playing older games and indie games, is another thing and generally many will work, however most won't perform even close to what you see on a Windows install.
Click to expand...

Again, this is an SSD firmware issue.

Linux developers encountered the issue back in 2022.
 
Humane said:
This has been a chaos from Microsoft update team. Why are they even getting PAID? Something it feels, they do it on purpose so consumers would go for expensive new components from dealers that these Microsoft technicians might have collaborated with. Microsoft is just another LOCAL company with bunch of Illiterate and Incompetent staff
Click to expand...

This is an issue with the SSD firmware, not Windows.
 
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