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

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61–70 of 173 posts

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

#61

Yesterday I received a Gigabyte Brix i5 and wanted to run Windows 7. The process was painful. The Brix has no USB 2.0 ports and no legacy USB in the bios - So keyboard and mouse were non functional. Presumably the ISO was built pre-USB 3.0 era. So I had to customize a untouched image with USB 3 drivers. Drivers had to be downloaded from Gigabytes website. All to learn that MS update doesn't work with Kaby Lake. Great…

>Running 10 feels like I've lost control over my own OS.

I suspect MS still want to run Windows on consumer devices like tablets and phone, which really have to be as automated and simplified from the user's perspective as possible. Because they don't have a commercially viable standalone mobile OS, they're still trying to push W10 there to extend their desktop success into mobile success.

This leads directly to the sort of worst-of-both-worlds scenario Apple fans are so worried about, in which MacOS becomes as locked down and unconfigurable as iOS. Except that possible dystopian future is the here and now in Microsoft Land. But the flexibility of Windows has always been it great strength. I worry that they are giving up that advantage, but will never be able to reap the rewards they hope that might lead to.

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

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bricking devices by Microsoft's friends Eh? What did I miss??

Pretty much just people using the term "brick" to mean anything from a crashing process, to something fixed by a re-install. Example: "I just loaded a buggy web-page and bricked my Chrome. LOL!" You know. How the term "hacking" has come to mean just about anything these days. There are no PC-bricks, despite people trying to claim the contrary.

Well there are PC bricks, just not software bricks. I'd argue pouring coffee on your motherboard can brick it pretty easily. I think once the term became more widespread on mobile people used it for everything.

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

#63
post #4

The recent pop-up ads, automatically downloading of Windows 10 by Microsoft and bricking devices by Microsoft's friends seems like a good indication of the tipping point for many people. Stallman was right, then? About 10 years ago I made the jump from Windows to GNU+Linux. It was quite annoying because at the time I was still heavily invested in web design and such, so not having photoshop was quite a loss. Nowadays…

> automatically downloading of Windows 10 by Microsoft and bricking devices Downvote for falsely claiming PCs can be bricked[1], even more so by simply using Window-update, which at worst might require a reinstall if the install is botched. [1] The definition of a brick is that something is now completely non-functional, beyond repair and thus "as useful as a brick". Something which can be recovered is by definition…

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.

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

#64
post #26

Ah, the delight of renting place to live. Landlord: You cannot take a shower unless you upgrade your bathroom. The pipes now monitor the equipment in use to stop you.

Not to support Microsoft's decision, but I'd say your analogy is backwards. It's more like you can't upgrade your bathroom unless you redo all the pipes (which is somewhat feasible). Your example would say in order to get windows 10, you would have to upgrade your hardware first (which isn't the case).

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

#65
post #9
post #7

This seems counterintuitive, even if Windows 7/8 are on life-support now. Surely letting people just install the updates 'as is' is better than restricting them. That said – this is not so different from Apple, which puts computers into "end of life" every few years, so you can't get any updates.

Isn't it quite the opposite though? Here, old computers get updates but new computers/cpus are killed before they get to start?

Probably not. If you're affected by this, most likely you know what you're doing and are by conscious choice running Windows 7 on a new computer -- and if you're willing to jump through all the hoops that entails just to avoid Windows 10, you're probably also going to accept being without security patches if the alternative is forced upgrade to Windows 10.

So they're opening the door for all kinds of nasty security problems. Bad move, I gotta say.

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

#67
post #4

The recent pop-up ads, automatically downloading of Windows 10 by Microsoft and bricking devices by Microsoft's friends seems like a good indication of the tipping point for many people. Stallman was right, then? About 10 years ago I made the jump from Windows to GNU+Linux. It was quite annoying because at the time I was still heavily invested in web design and such, so not having photoshop was quite a loss. Nowadays…

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 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. So, let me get this straight: I need to create an account... and log in... just to set the graphics options... on my own computer? Screw that! I downgraded to a driver that was over a year old, just to get away from all of nVidia's "improvements," like this "ShadowPlay" which was causing performance problems on my machine.

The driver for my execrable Razer Chroma keyboard was like this as well, but the build quality of that thing was so bad, I threw it out, and uninstalled the driver.

Microsoft has shifted into a whole new gear with Windows 10, and made it clear, despite user feedback, that they intend to stay the course, and continue the data collection, and advertising, and everything else that gets discussed on HN. I think this has sent a clear signal to the aftermarket vendors that they're free to do the same things, and we'll see more and more of it.

It looks like there are about 3 years of patches left for Windows 7. After that, there's Linux, Mac, Playstation, iDevices, and, now, the Switch for gaming. (Sadly, my boys already have an Xbox and an Xbox One.) There are plenty of other options to waste my time. I won't be upgrading to 10, and, thus, after 25 years building serious gaming rigs, I'm done buying any more PC kit. I just can't take all the hassle involved any more.

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

#68
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't the CPU instructions. Someone has to write drivers for the memory controller, and usb, Bluetooth, thunderbolt, on board graphics, sound, .... It could be done, but it is a major piece of work and noone would pay for it. If anyone wanted to do this themselves, then i believe windows 7 would run fine.

But microsoft isn't the one writing the drivers. Why would it block the CPU?

All three chips on the list have integrated GPU. Graphics drivers are pretty complex these days.

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

#69
post #17

I know it's not a popular opinion, but they do the right thing. Fragmentation of windows versions is a huge problem, and this approach is the lesser evil. I liked Windows 7 best (who doesn't?), but I'm using Windows 10 exclusively now because rolling release is the only viable model.

"because rolling release is the only viable model."

Well in their eyes, ads and data mining on an already paid system are also in the same vein it seems.

For some of us, moving to Linux is becoming the lesser evil.

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

#70
The main thing that annoys me about this is that i've been having major problems with Windows 10. I previously ran server 2012 as my daily driver, which was fine for everything i needed to do on Windows (run visual studio, play overwatch, basically).

I've installed Windows 10 LTSB (which is the true enterprise version of Windows 10, with all of the apps etc. removed [telemetry still remains and has to be manually disabled]), as i refuse to install home/pro/enterprise after having it randomly reinstall/re-enable all "apps" and other telemetry settings i explicitly disabled after updating. 10 LTSB has been great in other areas. With the Ryzen, mobo, ram, video card I now have, I have had constant crashes/freezes. People have said that updates fix this, but i'm yet to see it. This is a common issue with Windows 10, not the processor/setup. (ie. see https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5yf9ed/brand_new_ryzen...)

I took a step back, and went to Server 2016 datacenter with a GUI (or whatever the hell they're calling it these days). Despite the fact that this SERVER still has baked in telemetry and forced restarts (i mean, seriously?) It was rock solid, no crashes, no restarts, no freezes. I was unable, however, to install the latest video card drivers for the AMD RX480, as only Windows 10 was supported. Marrying the drivers up in device manager directly to whatever inf files were available in the extracted AMD folder didn't work, and although everything was fine, running a game just sucked massively (like 10fps).

Basically, it seems i'm getting the worst of both, and am completely falling into the "you HAVE to use windows 10" trap. I'd switch to Ubuntu in a heartbeat (and might still have to) but would end up doing pass-through which A. might still have the same set of issues, and B. kind of defeats the point for my usecase (Visual Studio, Overwatch). It's such a shame as the C# guys are making HUGE strides in the right direction, and then the rest of MS just seems so scummy these days.

I realize this doesn't contribute much, but this whole situation is pissing me off. It might sound petty, but MS effectively attacking people and their choices at home is going to lead me as an influencer in a professional environment to advise steering away from MS products as much as possible. I honestly think this is their plan. Drive those away from the MS server ecosystem (other than SQL server, which would be a huge cash-cow) and then discontinue the server products. The home-market, and information market, is so valuable (see Google) and "easy" in comparison - ie. how hard is it to bake in heavy telemetry when compared to almost anything related to ongoing server features/support> (idk, take data deduplication as an example....something else that they've removed from Windows 10 which is another pain in my ass). I think we're just going to see a switch in MS becoming a "Google desktop", and a cloud services provider for Linux, with MS products. This seems to fit with C# going open source/being on Linux, and SQL server running on Linux.

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