Microsoft Blocks Windows 7/8 Updates on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake Systems • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Blocks Windows 7/8 Updates on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake Systems

#141

Post by jimmies » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 5:46 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #130

jimmies wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure -- MS made it impossible to review the code given to them by the manufacturer. It's a Windows', or in other words, proprietary software problem. Do we have that problem with Linux?

Sure, off the top of my head Nvidia drivers contain a binary blob you don't get to see. Does it brick fake hardware? No but this is a very special case. Is it out of the realm of possibility that a vendor could ship a kernel module with a proprietary binary that could damage your hardware? Absolutely. Why would people accept these proprietary closed blobs over the open alternative drivers? Because the open drivers su…

If you use Nvidia, then the open driver sucks. It is like GIMP sucks, and that's a very real problem. But the open drivers don't brick my hardware, GIMP doesn't go and send my shit to the cloud without me knowing it, and won't refuse to let me edit whatever I want (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation).

This is a trade-off I am willing to make - that is all, nd I have mentioned it from the beginning.

Re: Microsoft Blocks Windows 7/8 Updates on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake Systems

#142

Post by jimmies » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 5:54 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #129

reacweb wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do ubuntu dist-upgrade since 2009. I have done 2 full reinstall. Once to try linux-mint. And another one a little latter when I bought a new ssd drive (switched to ubuntu gnome). The main upgrade issue was with systemd in 16.04: it found a dependency loop between net access and my nas drive and decided to cancel net access.

I ran Ubuntu on a netbook and a laptop from ~2007-2012. Wireless support was beyond awful and distro upgrades would break it beyond repair. There were also numerous bugs with Audio and their transition in desktop environments failed horribly.

2012 was a very different time. Stuff sucked so much back then, especially wireless. It doesn't help, also, that most people don't buy hardware for Linux but expect it to run on a random machine that they spared. Buy good hardware (Thinkpads, Chromebooks), do research, never worry about stuff not working.

Re: Microsoft Blocks Windows 7/8 Updates on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake Systems

#143

Post by cptskippy » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

nas wrote: post #138

cptskippy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows 10 feels unfinished and buggy to me. Everyone makes this point, no one elaborates it. How is it buggy and unfinished? I'm using it on 5 different devices with vastly different hardware profiles (1 modern gaming rig, 1 old gaming rig, 1 low end laptop, 1 convertible laptop, and 1 SFF PC) and they're all rock solid. I also use Windows 7 on my work laptop daily and moving back and forth between the two OSes da…

It's pretty clear to me that they started upgrading the "Control Panel" menus and never finished the job. At a surface level, you get new-style flat, simplified dialog boxes. To change more advanced settings, you jump into the old-style dialogs.

Absolutely that's what they're doing. The old Control Panel is very byzantine and cannot be completely done away with primarily because it's a modular system that vendors hook into when they add proprietary configurations for their hardware or software (e.g. Synaptics, Lenovo, Intel, Adobe). For backwards compatibility purposes they cannot just scrap it.

The aspects of the Control Panel that they do control have portions that date all the way back to Windows 3.1 and it's no small feat for them to refactor them into Modern UI apps. Instead of halting all OS progress until that herculean effort can be completed, they've chosen to gradually migrate or deprecate Control Panel features. This has been an on going project since Windows 8 and they've made a lot of progress. Many of the ancient UI elements like the "Windows Color and Appearance" panel are gone in Windows 10.

Personally I'd rather have it happen this way than the Apple approach (i.e. removing the UI and forcing you to edit plist files).

Re: Microsoft Blocks Windows 7/8 Updates on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake Systems

#144

Post by badsectoracula » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 6:04 PM UTC

y4mi wrote: post #131

ionised wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Last time I updated my nVidia video drivers, I found I had to create an account with nVidia to get into the configuration options of the driver on my machine. I see a lot of people with this confusion between the NVIDIA Control Panel and GeForce Experience. You do not need to create an account of any kind to use the NVIDIA Driver Control Panel. You never did and hopefully you never will. GeForce Experience on the o…

its pretty hard to find a download for the current windows 10 drivers without the GFE though.

You do not need to install it, go through the custom setup options and uncheck the option to install it.

Re: Microsoft Blocks Windows 7/8 Updates on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake Systems

#145

Post by frik » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 6:05 PM UTC

Everytime a slightly critical news about Microsoft is on HN, it gets off HN frontpage rather quickly. Be it by flagging, be it by spamming with "Microsoft isn't that bad", "Windows 7 is already 8 years old" comments to change the comment to voting ratio. --- a very negative thing about HN ranking algorithms, why hide stories with more comments than votes?

First Microsoft forbid AMD to announce Win7 support. They had to remove the Win7 phrase from their press releases of the announcements. Now that AMD provides chipset that work for Win7-10, Microsoft does another evil thing. How long have we endure this crazy CEO? Why has the whole desktop world has to suffer and no country investigates in this not okay business practices? Why haven't they split Microsoft in two companies back in late 1990s? Microsoft older products were great, but they turned evil around 2012 and kissed the QA department good-bye.

Re: Microsoft Blocks Windows 7/8 Updates on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake Systems

#146

Post by joosters » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 6:07 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #101

joosters wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are splitting hairs. My dad's PC was as useful as a brick to him after it downloaded Windows 7 and then wouldn't boot. If you think 'reinstall' is an acceptable or realistic solution for average users, you are badly mistaken.

You act as if this is something unique to Microsoft. Ubuntu distro upgrades were so bad (don't know if they still are) that you were better off reformatting and reinstalling. If the upgrade didn't flat out brick the device, it was almost certain to screw up drivers and setting beyond repair of even more power users. Apple had it's fair share of El Capitan and Sierra upgrade brickings and those require you to take you…

If we're talking anecdotes, then I should mention that I've had very little problem with many Ubuntu installs and Mac installs. Certainly no 'brickings'.

But you're missing the point. My Dad did not ask to install Windows 10 (n.b. I put the wrong version in my first post), Microsoft did that for him. Other OS upgrades may not be perfect, but at least they give users the choice.

Re: Microsoft Blocks Windows 7/8 Updates on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake Systems

#147

Post by cptskippy » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 6:10 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #140

Mithaldu wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said "start menu does not allow you to start all of the installed software from there" which can manifest in many different ways. And alright then, you're talking about a bug that was found in the Windows 10 Preview and fixed 1.5 years ago: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2015/09/18/annou... Or you're talking about something entirely else.

It looks similar, but if it's the same thing, it's a regression. I've only noticed the bug on my work computer this year. It's hard to say exactly what it is, because as you can see, MS publicly denies any problem (despite a lot of people reporting it) and technical information is really hard to find. All that I know is that I still can't access all the programs on the computer by the start menu. (Not a big issue, th…

I'm still not entirely clear on the issue but I suspect it might be older Applications that do not adhere to Microsoft guidelines for registering Applications in the Start Menu. Once upon a time you could just dump shortcuts into a specific location and you'd have Start Menu shortcuts. While that worked up through Windows 8ish, Microsoft guidelines have said not to do that since XP. In Windows 10 they removed support for that location.

Since XP they've also been telling developers to register their uninstall executable with the "Programs and Features" Control Panel Program. However even new apps (i.e. Node.JS) still drop Uninstall Shortcuts in the Start Menu.

Since Windows 8 they have recommended that developer keep configuration out of the Control Panel but Adobe, Intel, Synaptics, Lenovo, and countless others still register Control Panel programs. Microsoft has been gradually migrating old Control Panel Programs to the Modern Settings App. Once they're done they will no doubt remove the Control Panel and all of these Vendors will have broken software.

The problem is that Software vendors ignore Microsoft guidelines and now Microsoft is trying to fix the issues with Windows that have accumulated over the last 30 years and these failures to follow guidelines are starting to become apparent.

Re: Microsoft Blocks Windows 7/8 Updates on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake Systems

#148

Post by frik » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 6:25 PM UTC

ionised wrote: post #82

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just Microsoft making a mess out of Windows. Third-party vendors are conspiring to ruin the PC platform. As often comes up in these discussions, I only use my PC for gaming. I've upgraded to 10, and downgraded back to 7 again, twice, just to make sure it really was that bad. (I downgraded both of my boys' PC's as well, just recently, because of strange problems they were always having.) Last time I updated m…

> Last time I updated my nVidia video drivers, I found I had to create an account with nVidia to get into the configuration options of the driver on my machine. I see a lot of people with this confusion between the NVIDIA Control Panel and GeForce Experience. You do not need to create an account of any kind to use the NVIDIA Driver Control Panel. You never did and hopefully you never will. GeForce Experience on the o…

Now nVidia installs some tracking phone home shit, regardless of using advanced setting during setup and removing all unwanted "features". I had to remove to EXE files that were running, I found out about them with a Firewall and ProcessExplorer.

Can you nVidia stop this illegal practise?

Re: Microsoft Blocks Windows 7/8 Updates on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake Systems

#149

Post by oakwhiz » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 6:42 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #120

Jedd wrote: post #2

> This error occurs because new processor generations require the latest Windows version for support. Can someone explain this better? It feels like the direction of 'support' has been inverted. I thought all these new CPU's were supersets of the instruction set of previous gen i386/amd64 processors?

Contemporary commodity CPU's have all sorts of features that important customers want [1]. You probably are not an important customer if you don't own multiple large data centers of the sort located next to hydro-electric dams and who causes price drops on used high end Xeons when you upgrade the data center hardware. The CPU inside a CPU is vulnerable and it changes with every tic and toc. Windows 7 is pushing 8 yea…

Is there any evidence that suggests this might be the case?

Re: Microsoft Blocks Windows 7/8 Updates on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake Systems

#150

Post by 112233 » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #139

112233 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me 10 feels more buggy because of many small details that create an always-shifting, async-updating, never-where-I-put-it experience. Compared to that, even crashes in XP felt more... robust? Some examples: When copying files, copy progress dialog is sometimes opened hidden behind all other windows The ui formerly known as start menu populates search results incrementally, so Win+program name+enter can open diffe…

These complaints are somewhat valid and also not exclusively Windows things. I've experienced similar issues on every other major platform. > When copying files, copy progress dialog is sometimes opened hidden behind all other windows I've not personally experienced this. If you initiate a Copy and then change focus, the dialog will not steal focus. Perhaps that's what you're experiencing? I despise when apps steal f…

Thank you for the detailed response.

It's really funny, I like windows 10 a lot, for me it's the best Linux distribution, but there are a few of these little things...

To reply to some of your points to clean up possible misunderstandings:

> If you initiate a Copy and then change focus, the dialog will not steal focus. Perhaps that's what you're experiencing?

No, I drag or Ctrl-C/V file between two explorer windows and a new window icon appears on a taskbar with progress indication (by a backgound color fill), but the progress window is not visible until I click on that icon or Alt-tab to it. There are some complains and workarounds about this on the web.

> That notification sits in the tray until you manually dismiss it.

That is the cause of the problem for me. The notice is mostly invisible (no dialogs), until 7 days later "You have 15 minutes to pack up your things"...

> If you've installed a driver directly from the Vendor, Windows will not supersede that install with the Windows Update Version

It absolutely does. I manually install 341.81, everything works. Then, some weeks later bam, black screen, driver crashed. And a notification that driver was updated. Same way touchpad driver keeps updating after I manually reinstall it.

> > Randomly resets file associations.

See search results for "An App Default was Reset"

Since the amount of side-effects from the combinations of installed 3rd party software (antiviruses, ugh) is so huge, I'm constantly amazed they keep everything working and backwards compatible as much as they do. But some of this new stuff, eh.