Windows is damaging your data: its solution is to slow down your PC

The data that we store on the computer can be compromised for many reasons. For example, we can get infected by a virus, or we can suffer a mechanical failure in the storage unit. However, there are times when the culprit that this data is in danger is none other than a fault in Windows itself, a fault that, no matter how updated our computer is, we have nothing to do against it. And this is what has just happened to users who, with a new processor, have installed Windows 11, the new Microsoft operating system.

A few hours ago, Microsoft announced a bug in its operating system that can corrupt the data on users’ hard drives. This bug affects users who have computers with newer processors, and also have both Windows 11 and the Server 2022 server edition installed on the computer.

Windows is damaging your data

The problem lies in the support for the new Vector Advanced Encryption Standard (VAES) encryption algorithms. As reported by Microsoft, when using these algorithms together with other more common ones, such as AES-XTS or AES-GCM, there is a high risk of data loss on affected systems. However, not much more information has been provided in this regard.

Update Windows to protect data

This serious problem has been solved by Microsoft through the patches published on May 24 and June 14 of this year. Therefore, users who already have updated computers should not have to worry. Of course, these updates have made computers go much slower.

As some users have shown, after installing these updates, AES-based operations take twice as long to perform on both Windows 11 and the Server edition of the operating system.

Some of the scenarios where performance loss can be most noticeable is when using encryption software such as BitLocker, or secure connections over the Internet such as the use of the TLS protocol. These programs make use of the new routes configured for the use of the VAES algorithms, but given their nature, the performance loss is more than notable.

Solution to performance issues

However, luckily, this time Microsoft has not been satisfied with the result. And it is that, with the patches released last July, the company manages to completely solve the performance problems in Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022 and make the systems perform at their best again by working with the encryption algorithm without the risk what that meant for the data.

Therefore, Microsoft strongly recommends that all users install the June 2022 update to correct the bugs that could cause us to lose data due to misuse of encryption, and then install the July security updates, which restore the full computer performance.

If we haven’t installed the June and July updates for this reason, the new August patches , due today, will automatically fix these encryption issues without slowing down your PC.