Windows RT Pulled

I saw this on Saturday but didn’t blog it because I figured Microsoft would have it fixed before long — but no:

Soon after the update’s global release, on 17 October, Microsoft started to receive reports that once it had been applied to RT tablets and laptops, the gadgets had frozen during the boot-up process.

Windows RT is the version of Microsoft’s operating system built to work with mobile and portable devices that use Arm chips. By contrast, other version of Windows run on machines that use processors from Intel or AMD.

Soon after the problems were reported, Microsoft pulled Windows RT 8.1 from its update site.

The update was pulled while it was “investigating a situation affecting a limited number of users”, it explained in a support forum response. It added that it was working on a fix for the problem it had caused.

Prior to the official release, Windows RT user Scott Williams found a way to help people with tablets crippled by the update. Mr Williams created a start-up drive with a USB stick that helped bring stricken RT gadgets back to life.

These kinds of things are no fun at all. Yesterday I had to run a firmware update on my MacBook Air, to see if it was one of the ones Apple sold with a failure-prone flash drive. Mine passed the test, so I’m lucky enough not to have to take mine in for a repair or an exchange. But that’s not true for a lot of people this week, Windows and OS X alike.