The Skill Issue Institute is pleased to recognize Prof. Cannot Reproduce (Class of 2022) for pioneering research into the intersection of operating system updates and solid-state storage behavior, demonstrated through Windows 11 security update KB5063878 released on August 12, 2025.
Following the update’s deployment, users began reporting an intriguing phenomenon: SSDs mysteriously disappearing from Windows, corrupted files, and systems failing to boot. Reports emerged primarily from Japan, where users noticed drive failures occurring after installing large game updates for titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and Honkai: Star Rail. Analysis revealed a pattern: SSDs built on specific NAND controllers, particularly DRAM-less models, exhibited failures when drives exceeded 60 percent capacity and experienced sustained writes of 50 GB or more.
Prof. Reproduce’s most impressive achievement was the deployment’s selective nature. “The race condition we introduced only manifests under very specific circumstances,” they explained during our annual Hardware Compatibility Lottery Workshop. “Most users will never experience it. This makes traditional debugging essentially impossible.”
After more than a week of investigation, the operating system vendor issued a statement that our faculty now considers a masterclass in technical communication: “After thorough investigation, we found no connection between the August 2025 Windows security update and the types of hard drive failures reported on social media.” Internal testing yielded no reproduction, telemetry data showed nothing meaningful, and crucially, no customer had contacted support directly about the issue.
The storage controller manufacturer took a different approach, acknowledging that “controllers that may have been affected are under review” and confirming engagement with industry stakeholders. Our Vendor Relations department considers this divergence in messaging a fascinating case study in distributed responsibility.
Users seeking workarounds were advised to avoid writing large files in quick succession, instead performing writes in smaller batches over time. Extracting large compressed archives should be done in several steps rather than all at once. For those already affected, experts suggested booting to an external OS, running TestDisk to restore partition information, and repairing the BCD through Windows Recovery.
Prof. Reproduce’s work exemplifies the core philosophy of our “It Works On My Machine” program: the purest form of the discipline is creating issues that exist definitively in the field yet remain stubbornly absent in controlled testing environments.