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Microsoft: No Driver Updates Allowed for Win7 and Win8

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Re: Microsoft: No Driver Updates Allowed for Win7 and Win8

#111

Post by Strom »

mrguyorama wrote: post #49
m463 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only free, but forced!

My Windows 7 PC was never forcibly upgraded. I don't know what you are talking about

There was certainly a semi-forced situation at one point. My mom's Windows 7 laptop started the Windows 10 installation automatically one night, with no questions asked. The computer just restarted and started installing it.

Now the reason I say semi-forced is that it was still possible to cancel it. The automatic process got paused at the EULA acceptance screen and if you chose not to accept the license terms then the installer would start a lengthy rollback process and eventually get you back to Windows 7.

On my own computer I never experienced this because I proactively chose hide update for any Windows 10 related patch.

Re: Microsoft: No Driver Updates Allowed for Win7 and Win8

#112

Post by PeterGV »

cpgxiii wrote: post #72
dcuthbertson wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can still update compliant drivers If your customers aren't willing to install unsigned drivers (and none of mine are), then the new driver will have to be put through the HLK tests and submitted to Msft for signing. My issue isn't so much the testing/signing process, but that I've had an HCK test suite setup for the past 4 years that has worked just fine. It will have to be replaced w/an HLK test setup, the re…

I will absolutely denigrate vendors who lag behind on driver quality and support, particularly vendors who sell expensive equipment tied to ancient and shitty drivers who can't be bothered to update them support new Windows versions. Outside of a small set of drivers that WHQL/HLK testing may not work for, an unsigned driver means (1) the vendor doesn't care (i.e. "sold you expensive equipment and have you by the bal…

Passing the WLKs is, absolutely, a best practice.

But, with all due respect, Mr. cpgxiii, you seem to not understand the vast extent of systems that use Windows.

It is simply NOT POSSIBLE to run the HLKs on certain hardware systems. Let me give you a few examples:

We write a driver for an unmanned aircraft. The driver runs on a custom processor box, with custom, on-board hardware, that's inside the aircraft. This custom system will not support the HLK client. Ever. The hardware for which we've written the driver cannot be separated from the custom system. This customer is now screwed.

We write a driver for a device that lives in a piece of industrial equipment. Even if we could pull the boards for which the driver was written, and stick them into a system that was capable of serving as an HLK client, the hardware is designed in such as a way that is designed to be never powered off. This device, therefore, does not support ANY non D0 power states. While it might be possible to get his device to pass the HLKs with a LOT of work, it's unlikely.

There are a lot of drivers/devices in the world that fall into similar categories to those above.

And, there is the case of File System Isolation Minifilters. Any such driver will never pass all 80,000 WLK tests (that's a real number, by the way) due to the way these tests are written. We have worked with MSFT for YEARS to try to get the Minifilter tests to treat Isolation Minifilters specially. MSFT simply does not have sufficient motivation to make this happen.

So, yeah, easy to say "just pass the HLKs" -- I wish it were that easy.

Re: Microsoft: No Driver Updates Allowed for Win7 and Win8

#113

Post by justinclift »

Silhouette wrote: post #110
justinclift wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forced is clearly the wrong word ... No, it's not. Many users had their Win 7 computer "upgraded" to Win 10 even when they expressly didn't want that to happen.

I'm literally typing this message on a Windows 7 PC. If Microsoft had forced those to upgrade to Windows 10, how is that possible?

Even some basic research via any search engine will answer that question. ;)

Re: Microsoft: No Driver Updates Allowed for Win7 and Win8

#114

Post by qayxc »

pulse7 wrote: post #101
qayxc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You buy a copy of Windows binary code. No you don't. You buy a limited license to use and replicate the binary for personal use. You don't "buy" anything but the physical medium the binary code shipped on. Transferring ownership of a medium containing the binary code to a third party (bought or otherwise) ends your license to use the binary, no matter if you retain a physical copy. You also don't have the right to…

This may be true in US, but in Germany it is not... and this was decided by Germany's supreme court...

Sources, please.

reality says otherwise: https://www.dr-bahr.com/news/verkauf-eines-nicht-aktivierten...

Why is it that people still don't understand the difference between selling software licenses and using said licenses?

The decision was explicitly about non-activated licences and didn't include the right to continue using a license of a sold product.

EuGH C128/11 explicitly states that you have to delete/invalidate any copy of used software that you sell.

The Vergabekammer Münster Az. VK 1-2/16 doesn't disagree wih that ruling either and neither do BGH Rs. I ZR 129/08 and Az. I ZR 8/13, which simply state that reselling volume licences is allowed.

Nowhere was a ruling made that didn't require uninstalling and deleting existing installations after resale.

Re: Microsoft: No Driver Updates Allowed for Win7 and Win8

#116

Post by qayxc »

zineketter wrote: post #108
qayxc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You buy a copy of Windows binary code. No you don't. You buy a limited license to use and replicate the binary for personal use. You don't "buy" anything but the physical medium the binary code shipped on. Transferring ownership of a medium containing the binary code to a third party (bought or otherwise) ends your license to use the binary, no matter if you retain a physical copy. You also don't have the right to…

You might want to read the EULA (it has a specific provision for Germany and Austria by the way). Soething that is true in the US isn't necessarily true in other places.

> You might want to read the EULA

And you might want to read EuGH Rs. C-128/11.

Nowhere does it allow reselling used software that is still activated. It only concerns the right to make copies for personal use (well, duh), and reselling non-activated keys as well as software packages associated with it.

The license terms concerning the use (e.g. activation) are NOT subject of the ruling. Why is that so hard to understand? Copying software and the license to USE said software legally are two different issues.

It's akin to the difference between property and possession. Being in possession of and selling a (digital) copy of a piece of software doesn't imply ownership of said software and the license involved.

But please feel free to provide me with a ruling that says otherwise.

Re: Microsoft: No Driver Updates Allowed for Win7 and Win8

#117

Post by viewer5 »

PeterGV wrote: post #112
cpgxiii wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will absolutely denigrate vendors who lag behind on driver quality and support, particularly vendors who sell expensive equipment tied to ancient and shitty drivers who can't be bothered to update them support new Windows versions. Outside of a small set of drivers that WHQL/HLK testing may not work for, an unsigned driver means (1) the vendor doesn't care (i.e. "sold you expensive equipment and have you by the bal…

Passing the WLKs is, absolutely, a best practice. But, with all due respect, Mr. cpgxiii, you seem to not understand the vast extent of systems that use Windows. It is simply NOT POSSIBLE to run the HLKs on certain hardware systems. Let me give you a few examples: We write a driver for an unmanned aircraft. The driver runs on a custom processor box, with custom, on-board hardware, that's inside the aircraft. This cus…

> the hardware is designed in such as a way that is designed to be never powered off

What kind of equipment is like this? Or is it common for factory equipment or something? And what would be the consequence of a total power outage (including generators failing, I guess)?

This isn't something I've heard of before, it's interesting.

Re: Microsoft: No Driver Updates Allowed for Win7 and Win8

#118

Post by Silhouette »

justinclift wrote: post #113
Silhouette wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm literally typing this message on a Windows 7 PC. If Microsoft had forced those to upgrade to Windows 10, how is that possible?

Even some basic research via any search engine will answer that question. ;)

Why would I need to do any research? If the "forced" claim were true, it would be literally impossible for me to be doing what I'm doing right now.

Microsoft might have tried to deceive or even coerce users of its older operating systems in order to get them to accept an upgrade. However, the upgrade was not forced, because you could (and some people did) avoid moving to the new version.

It does not usefully advance the discussion about Microsoft's behaviour to misrepresent what happened. There's plenty to criticise without the hyperbole, after all.

Re: Microsoft: No Driver Updates Allowed for Win7 and Win8

#119

Post by ComputerGuru »

bgorman wrote: post #88
ComputerGuru wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working video support (without hardware acceleration) out of the box without any external drivers for all current and future graphics cards because they actually implement the “core” vga spec (plus all the official and unofficial revisions to get higher resolutions working). We have to ship updates to our bootable Linux and BSD applications every six months just so customers don’t get stuck in text mode, or worse yet…

How does this differ from the "VESA" linux driver?

They start at the same place but it works better (more resolutions, greater hardware support, fewer bugs, etc), includes features that are outside the scope of the driver itself in the Linux design (EDID querying and matching for dynamic resolution and refresh rate detection), performs much better when doing software-accelerated operations, has driver/abstraction-level DPI scaling, and is compatible with all DE/software that doesn’t try to directly use OpenGL.

Mostly it’s just that the video abstraction on Linux is driver-dependent (eg access to video device/fb is dependent on choice of driver) functioning at a lower level than the Windows equivalent.

I’m not sure if it’s true but I hear Wayland is throwing away all support for non-drm framebuffers?

Re: Microsoft: No Driver Updates Allowed for Win7 and Win8

#120

Post by PeterGV »

viewer5 wrote: post #117
PeterGV wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passing the WLKs is, absolutely, a best practice. But, with all due respect, Mr. cpgxiii, you seem to not understand the vast extent of systems that use Windows. It is simply NOT POSSIBLE to run the HLKs on certain hardware systems. Let me give you a few examples: We write a driver for an unmanned aircraft. The driver runs on a custom processor box, with custom, on-board hardware, that's inside the aircraft. This cus…

> the hardware is designed in such as a way that is designed to be never powered off What kind of equipment is like this? Or is it common for factory equipment or something? And what would be the consequence of a total power outage (including generators failing, I guess)? This isn't something I've heard of before, it's interesting.

After power-down, the system reboots, and the process needs to restart. All in-progress activity is lost. There's no suspend; There's no hibernate. There's no "modern standby."

There's "The system was powered off, soooo... we're going to let the glass furnace cool down, and in a few hours when it's sufficiently cool and everything else in the plant is ready, we're going to start up the process again."

Needless to say, this isn't the sort of behavior that'll pass the HLKs.

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