Microsoft blocks Windows update on Windows 7/8.1 from working with Kabylake and Ryzen

[PingSpike]

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...ch-you-receive-a-your-pc-uses-a-processor-tha

The beatings will continue until morale improves!

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I discovered somewhere that Kaby would "not be supported" in Win 7 [I skipped Win 8 and nothing much lost with that as far as I can tell.]

Somebody else here observed they didn't have a problem with a Kaby running Win 7.

Imagine the sieve of possibilities:

You have an old system and want to raise the OS to Win 10 -- no problem over a reasonable span of years and CPU generations

You have a new system and want to use an old OS -- possible problem -- either as severe as you describe, or less so given my other source of "compatibility-intel."

You can always keep the old system for the life of Win7/8, or upgrade.

There are only a few reasons to demand the older-OS/newer-CPU combination: my reason -- WMC. People can either learn to live with things like Cortana, "apps" and the "app-store, or the chicklet start menu and simple-minded access to things like "Control Panel" features, or they can use something like "Classic Shell." Giving Win 10 the look and feel of Win 7 has made me a Win 10 fan. I just wish I could have it with WMC.

It seems to me there are always going to be these fault-lines across the software and hardware options. I'm just a bit suspicious of a company like MS choosing a lower common-denominator that appeals to a generation of thumb-typists and multi-year Geek-Squad accounts. But that may have little to do with a "fault-line" for enthusiast hardware-junkies, and more to do with a revolution in mobile devices.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow, talk about a big F U to corporate customers. They may only be able to source 7th-gen Core hardware from their ISVs, but want to put their corporate Win7 Enterprise image on them.

Or is this just a big F U to home users?

Looks like I wont be able to finish my multi-boot deployment to my second DeskMini, at least not with a "fully-updated" Win7.

I don't get the point (at least in any non-evil, valid sense). Win7 isn't going to deploy new features in WU, so what's already present, feature-wise, is it. And those features, while perhaps not "officially validated" with 7th-Gen Core CPUs, were at least workably compatible.

Edit: Ah well, would we expect anything less from the World's Foremost Predatory (Software) Monopoly-turned Spy Agency?

Edit: I figured it out. This is Microsoft's way of FORCING enterprises to adopt Win10, rather than Win7. Using hardware availability as a leverage, and their control over Windows Updates as the other. Pretty dirty to be "held hostage" to your software vendor. But I guess that's what Microsoft's customers choose.

 

[mxnerd]

I always wonder why so many IT guys want to punch MS CEOs, they do have reasons.

 

[quikah]

I don't get the point (at least in any non-evil, valid sense). Win7 isn't going to deploy new features in WU, so what's already present, feature-wise, is it. And those features, while perhaps not "officially validated" with 7th-Gen Core CPUs, were at least workably compatible.

It costs money (developer time) to validate new hardware. Why spend the money on something they don't want to support?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm not asking them to validate them for Win7. Just to leave things alone, and not spend developer money and time to go out of their way to intentionally BLOCK that hardware on Win7. Just let it be, x86/x64 is what it is, it still runs, let it. If the customer calls in for support, just re-iterate that they are running an unsupported configuration, and don't offer support for it. How hard is that?

 

[13Gigatons]

Microsoft has bet the farm on Windows 10 spyware edition. (I do understand them wanting to dump Windows 7 but Windows 8.1 is still viable)

 

[PliotronX]

What a cheap move.

 

[quikah]

I'm not asking them to validate them for Win7. Just to leave things alone, and not spend developer money and time to go out of their way to intentionally BLOCK that hardware on Win7. Just let it be, x86/x64 is what it is, it still runs, let it. If the customer calls in for support, just re-iterate that they are running an unsupported configuration, and don't offer support for it. How hard is that?

Sorry, that is not how commercial software works. Don't like it then don't use that hardware or switch to Linux.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sorry, that is not how commercial software works. Don't like it then don't use that hardware or switch to Linux.

The original Win7 purchase contract said nothing about that it would block updates on future, but compatible CPUs.

Microsoft should be issuing refunds!

Edit: Should I bust out one of my retail boxes, and post a photo? Pretty sure it says something along the lines of:

Compatibility:
CPU: x86 (for 32-bit) or x64 (for 64-bit) processor required, with a minimum clock-speed of 1Ghz or above.
RAM: 2GB minimum (for 32-bit) or 4GB minimum (for 64-bit)
Disk space: ...

etc.

Nothing in there about, "x64-compatible CPU, EXCEPT for Kaby Lake or anything newer".

Screw commercial software with FALSE ADVERTISING, that is how our laws work.

 

[quikah]

The original Win7 purchase contract said nothing about that it would block updates on future, but compatible CPUs.

Microsoft should be issuing refunds!

Edit: Should I bust out one of my retail boxes, and post a photo? Pretty sure it says something along the lines of:

Compatibility:
CPU: x86 (for 32-bit) or x64 (for 64-bit) processor required, with a minimum clock-speed of 1Ghz or above.
RAM: 2GB minimum (for 32-bit) or 4GB minimum (for 64-bit)
Disk space: ...

etc.

Nothing in there about, "x64-compatible CPU, EXCEPT for Kaby Lake or anything newer".

Screw commercial software with FALSE ADVERTISING, that is how our laws work.

Hey, that retail box of Windows works fine on the latest CPU, not sure why you are trying to bring that up.

 

[escrow4]

Its not 2009. upgrade. As for slow cheap businesses, upgrade. I use a redacted2500 non K with a hunk o junk spinning rust and Office 2010(!) at work because the company hasn't realised that a stack of Win 10 Kaby Lake NUCs would save them a fortune in energy bills across the site and would also be vastly easier to use with an SSD. Upgrade. Its not 2009 any more. There are measurable useful differences with newer hardware.




No profanity allowed in the tech forums.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[XavierMace]

Screw commercial software with FALSE ADVERTISING, that is how our laws work.

No it's not.

 

[mikeymikec]

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...ch-you-receive-a-your-pc-uses-a-processor-tha

The beatings will continue until morale improves!

Yeesh. Why on earth did MS spend the time implementing this?

Microsoft has bet the farm on Windows 10 spyware edition. (I do understand them wanting to dump Windows 7 but Windows 8.1 is still viable)

I don't think I understand it (except insofar as your first sentence goes). Surely the argument that Win7 will only be supported with updates to 2020 should convince most people that it's not a great choice for brand-new hardware, and if it's not (sufficient to convince), that's the user's decision. This is just a dick move IMO.

I'm also wondering whether MS is going to take a dump on my Haswell Win7 PC at some point as well, since any common-sense logic seems to have gone out of the window.

 

[PingSpike]

Windows 8.1 still has mainstream support until 2018 by the way. Not that the move made any sense even with the "extended support isn't real support, its ONLY security updates...unless they don't feel like it anymore" argument.

 

[tidy]

.

 

[mikeymikec]

I posted on a number of threads basically saying 'FUD' because all there was to go on were some vague comments, no quotes from MS, and nothing that really made any sense. I think that all MS's announcement here does is undermine confidence in their service and increase confidence in any old bit of FUD that anyone posts.

I was wondering what the overall motivation was to do this in the first place, because the number of people who would be directly affected by this announcement are very likely to be less than 1% of the total Windows user base. Those people are likely to be enthusiasts of some sort, and I wonder whether the reasoning was to ensure that many enthusiasts aren't saying "I'm sticking with Windows 7, as it works for me" as that is going to affect the opinion of non-enthusiasts who consult them. I often get customers asking which version of Windows I run on my own PC. However, when MS moves the goalposts like this, enthusiasts can no longer confidently make certain statements with regard to MS's support of their products. I've held the believe for a fair number of years that it's always best to give the customer a choice even if you strongly recommend a particular option, rather than saying "you can only do this". Just like when Windows 8 was released, I've heard plenty of people who have misgivings about Windows 10, and it only exacerbates the situation when you tell them that they don't have a choice if they want to run Windows.

Coming back to my earlier post about my own Haswell Win7 PC, I suppose MS's logic is that they made the announcement very soon after the release of these processors (though wouldn't it have made sense to make the announcement before the release?), thereby ensuring that people aren't in the situation of having run Win7 on a new build for say a year then getting hit by this announcement. Even if that logic is what MS subscribes to in this situation, I don't think it's entirely implausible that they could start yanking support for older platforms, maybe allowing any CPU architecture up to the date that Win8 RTM was released, or mainstream support, or whatever.

 

[PingSpike]

I wonder what happens if you're running Windows in a VM, which usually passes the CPUID through.

 

[redzo]

Well, it's as expected

AUG 30, 2016:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3112...e-zen-chips-will-support-only-windows-10.html

OS support for intel NUCs:
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/boards-and-kits/intel-nuc-boards/000005628.html

 

[ultimatebob]

It figures... Microsoft wants to kill off Windows 7 as soon as possible, and that's going to be even tougher if people keep building brand new PC's and putting Windows 7 on them.

I think that they don't want to end up with another Windows XP situation where 40% of the world is still using an OS that no longer gets security updates a few years from now.

I'd like to say "if you don't like it, switch to Linux", but older Linux distributions are having trouble running on Ryzen processors as well. Sorry guys, but it's time to upgrade to a newer OS.

 

[SPBHM]

Qualcomm “8996"

can you even install 7 or 8.1 on this?

well, that's a pretty low move, there is no good justification;

but, can't you load security updates using another software? I think it's possible,
also considering windows 7 had lots of "telemetry" updates last year, it's probably better to not be installing most updates anyway, if you use win7 for the better privacy.

 

[Dahak]

Qualcomm “8996"
...but, can't you load security updates using another software? I think it's possible.

I was wondering the same thing, as its possible to still grab the updates manually and install them, or will this block that out too? As it seems that its talking about the WU control panel.

 

[Raduque]

While I believe that people should stop running outdated crap on new hardware, I think this is a bad move.

People are going to do what they want to do, and that includes cripping their brand new 2017 CPU with a 2009 OS, and all this is going to do is assist in identity theft and building botnets.

 

[John Connor]

What are updates? Haven't used those since 2004 when I ran Win 98se. I've only gotten one virus in my life. Maybe that's because I know how to run a PC and not like an idiot?
So all in all, who cares. I don't require updates. Unless of course it fixes something and I've never ran into that issue expect for asinine Team Viewer.

 

[John Connor]

You watch. M$ will make their software not run on 7, etc too. Like Skype or Office.