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

149 points by en 10y ago

Jedd 10y ago
> 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?
- tekklloneer 10y ago
  Microsoft does extensive testing, not just on the "instruction set", but also the chipsets and surrounding ecosystems of the processor. It's annoying, and probably well within their ability to, but also not inexpensive.
  - mdekkers 10y ago
    also not inexpensive Isn't that what we pay them not insignificant amounts of money for?
    - kodfodrasz 10y ago
      You do not buy a perpetual support license with those OSes. The cost of those operating systems was for a given list of compatible hardware. Windows 7 support ended, Windows 8 support ended, and Windows 8.1 is no longer sold, but still supported (so security patches still arrive). Like it or not, I understand MS, as backporting and re-valdating anything is a huge cost. Been there, done that, although for embedded systems.
      - einr 10y ago
        The problem here is (at least) twofold: 1) this is almost certainly a partially arbitrary limitation, since Kaby Lake is architecturally identical to Skylake, yet one is supposedly supported and the other not, and 2) AMD Ryzen hardware has already been sold with the explicit promise by the vendor that it will have Windows 7 support; Microsoft is now breaking that promise. Also, you may be misinformed regarding how Microsoft's support lifecycles work. MAINSTREAM support has ended for Windows 7 -- which means no new features -- but it still receives security patches until 2020. So does Windows 8 and 8.1. In fact, even Windows Vista still receives security patches until April 11th. It seems like what's happening here is that they pushed out a patch that maliciously UN-supports certain hardware. I was running Windows 7 on Kaby Lake fine yesterday and receiving security updates, and now they're telling me I can't. Why? All the chipset drivers are third party and have nothing to do with Windows Update.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - falcolas 10y ago
        > You do not buy a perpetual support license with those OSes. Well, when it come to Windows 10, I would say that yes, we are effectively paying for a perpetual support license. If Microsoft is comfortable throwing ads at me as a part of normal OS operation (and they are, and keep putting them in new locations I have to disable individually), I'm comfortable saying that I'm paying them perpetually.
    - tekklloneer 10y ago
      Most people are paying them money for a version of windows that works with the hardware they are buying. You won't be able to find an OEM selling win 7 on a ryzen box, for example. If you buy a separate license, you should be aware of compatibility as well.
  - cm2187 10y ago
    But intel develops the chipset drivers, not microsoft.
    - kodfodrasz 10y ago
      and still they contain bugs sometimes, which need software workarounds. If interested in the topic you can surely find several examples in the Linux source codes as well.
      - seanp2k2 10y ago
        The chipset can also contain bugs which software can't work around. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Cougar_Point_chipset_flaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Cougar_Point_chip... as the most recent example I can think of.
    - tekklloneer 10y ago
      For something as core as chipset drivers, microsoft does heavy testing. They also do testing of combinations on various combinations of hardware. "It should have worked" doesn't go far when an OEM is complaining that their users are having problems.
- belgianguy 10y ago
  IMHO, it feels like just another hamfisted way to get the adoption of Windows 10 to increase. The whole point of Windows used to be that it would run on nearly every system, with most overhead being reactivating the license, now you'll actually find yourself re-installing an OS that refuses to work on a newer processor. They're closing the gates to their pseudo-walled garden. Windows 7/8 don't have permanent revenue streams, WIndows 10 does (or will). For all the song and dance of Windows 10 being superior, Linux seems to not care at all about what processor it runs on. And Ubuntu does just fine.
  - mbreese 10y ago
    Linux seems to not care at all about what processor it runs on That's not true, there definitely are unsupported (Intel/x64) CPUs for Linux. It even prints a lovely warning on boot to not file any bug reports because you're using an unsupported CPU. But, what Linux does (often) do is make it possible to get a kernel patch or upgrade to add the missing support.
  - ThrowawayR2 10y ago
    Outside of an all-volunteer ecosystem, like Linux or the BSDs, supporting and validating software on a particular processor family costs time, money, and ties up engineering resources, you know.
- CJefferson 10y ago
  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.
  - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    Rough estimate for how long that would take / how much it would cost?
  - cm2187 10y ago
    But microsoft isn't the one writing the drivers. Why would it block the CPU?
    - szatkus 10y ago
      All three chips on the list have integrated GPU. Graphics drivers are pretty complex these days.
- mbreese 10y ago
  It's not just Windows that has this issue. I recently had issues trying to add new Intel servers to an existing cluster. The new servers had a CPU that was too new to be supported by the older (CentOS 6 based) Linux OS that the cluster was running. Now, this particular problem was fixed in the kernel and pushed in the next point release by Red Hat. Unfortunately for us, it never made it to the upstream cluster OS vendor, and we weren't able to patch the supported kernel, so we were stuck for those machines.
  - creshal 10y ago
    Intel's Skylake processors caused kernel panics on earlier Linux versions, but that never affected Windows, and Microsoft still supports Skylake on 7/8. And Kaby Lake is just a rebranded Skylake with higher clocks, with no hardware differences. So this is just Microsoft fucking over users.
- ThrowawayR2 10y ago
  > I thought all these new CPU's were supersets of the instruction set of previous gen i386/amd64 processors? Yes and no. People seem to forget that CPUs are not magical and can have bugs. On top of that, each processor family and processor stepping[0] have their own distinct bugs. (An example list can be found at [1], starting on page 8.) Well known incidents include the Pentium FDIV bug[0] and the more recent TSX bug[1] but there are a whole host of lesser ones that never reach the public consciousness because the OS works around them, e.g [2]. Needless to say, creating these workarounds takes time and effort and re-testing and that translates to money. And anything that costs money, well, ... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepping_level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepping_level [1] http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/specification-updates/xeon-e3-1200v5-spec-update.pdf http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug [3] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2464880/intel-finds-specialized-tsx-enterprise-bug-on-haswell-broadwell-cpus.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2464880/intel-finds-specializ... [4] http://www.dailytech.com/Linus+Torvalds+on+Core+2+Duo+Errata+Totally+Insignificant/article7897.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Linus+Torvalds+on+Core+2+Duo+Errata...
- brudgers 10y ago
  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 years old and was designed around older and almost certainly early generation Management Engine designs (and perhaps a few down the road iterations of it). But it wasn't designed with data from the field about attacks and exploits. Windows 8 is largely a reskinning of Windows 7 and probably has similar vulnerabilities in regard to accessing the CPU in the CPU if such vulnerabilities exist. Windows 10 has a somewhat different architecture and almost certainly has been designed considering ME and AMD's spin on it from the ground up and reflects all those years of experience from field deployments and the CPU vendors current roadmaps. Importantly, Windows 10 is designed with the idea that future experience will require changing the code. Anyway, my suspicion is that the internal security model of at least some contemporary chips are considered to have probable or actual vulnerabilities exposed by Windows 7/8 and the business decision is that the most effective way of mitigating those vulnerabilities is simply to not support the consumer use case of buying new hardware and then running old versions of Windows on it. The business case I am imagining runs along the lines of how much damage would Microsoft suffer if there was a problem versus how much damage it suffers from pissing off a handful of edge case users (considering that the majority of the noise will come from people who don't use Windows). [1]: example AMT, etc. https://boingboing.net/2016/06/15/intel-x86-processors-ship-with.html https://boingboing.net/2016/06/15/intel-x86-processors-ship-...
  - oakwhiz 10y ago
    Is there any evidence that suggests this might be the case?
    - brudgers 10y ago
      What would count a evidence?
      - 10y ago
jimmies 10y ago
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 I am so glad to have an OS that works for me and not artificially limits me to what it thinks I should do. As extreme as Stallman was, I came to appreciate him more and more for what he has done to protect users' freedom and privacy.
- Svenskunganka 10y ago
  For the Photoshop part, check out Krita (https://krita.org/en/ https://krita.org/en/). Although it isn't exactly like Photoshop, a non-power user wouldn't notice the difference between the two. And Krita is really the only program I've come across on Linux that actually has a really nice UI. I still can't move over to Linux fully, even though I want to, it's just not there for me yet. Gaming being the biggest issue, but also general user experience is mediocre at best, even on a vanilla Ubuntu installation. Kubuntu is definitely better thanks to KDE, but still problematic. I still haven't tested out Elementary OS, but most my problems stems from driver issues (especially WiFi, printers and trackpads), which I believe would be the same since it's a kernel issue.
  - eropple 10y ago
    I'm not a power user, but I want my tablet to work (DisplayLink on Linux is dodgy, though I did eventually get it to work--not Krita's fault but Linux in general remains a mess with hardware at times) and I want to be able to combine filter effects and behaviors with painting--and Krita has trouble with that. It is a good-not-great program (I even gave them money for it!) but it's not a Photoshop alternative unless the subset you need is pretty restricted. (The mess that is Krita/GIMP interop makes it a non-starter, IMO.)
  - executesorder66 10y ago
    Depending on what you are using it for, I generally would not recommend Krita as a photoshop replacement. Here is my mini replacement list: Use Case | windows | Linux digital art | Corel Paint | Krita image editing | photoshop | GIMP simple image editing | paint.net | pinta vector image editing | illustrator | inkscape photo editing | lightroom | darktable
owenwil 10y ago
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.
- 0x0 10y ago
  Isn't it quite the opposite though? Here, old computers get updates but new computers/cpus are killed before they get to start?
  - sddfd 10y ago
    They are trying to kill windows 7/8.1 to get as much people to 10 as possible.
  - einr 10y ago
    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.
- ianai 10y ago
  No, there you're pointing out the actual difference between Apple and Microsoft. I don't even remember the last time I directly paid for a Mac OS (10.6?). Nowadays it all comes down through the Mac App Store, a usb key, or a rescue partition. Periodically Apple discontinues which hardware sets it supports. You can still boot that same hardware on whatever the latest, most patched OS that will run on it - from Apple. They sell hardware. Intel does the exact same thing with their processors. Microsoft does the same with its products - which are software based. Per Microsoft, Windows XP is EOL. It doesn't matter what hardware you want to run it on - Windows XP is no longer supported by Microsoft. Are they attempting to push people to newer versions of Windows? Absolutely. They're essentially defining their product. This seems different on the outside but I'm not sure it is. I think they've said something about Skylake/above functions differently enough to require significant changes to Windows 7.
0x0 10y ago
I wonder if you can get a refund from Microsoft if you purchased windows 7/8 retail. Doesn't the system requirements usually just spell out "such and such CPU or better"? Suddenly the requirements have changed post-purchase to "such and such CPU or worse"? Also I wonder if this backfires on Intel. Why even bother providing 16bit and 32bit cpu modes if the CPUs aren't backwards compatible.
- cm2187 10y ago
  But is the CPU not compatible? I was under the impression Microsoft artificially creates an incompatibility in a shameless move to push users to an ad based OS. I wasn't aware that any cpu instruction had been removed that would prevent Win7 from running normally.
  - 0x0 10y ago
    If it can't run windows 7 like older processors can, then I would argue it is not compatible.
    - cm2187 10y ago
      Only because Microsoft wrote a line of code that says if CPU is this model than do not run. There is a big irony in Microsoft writing that sort of code given the efforts they have to go through to make applications with similar code (if OS version > 7 then do not run) run anyway by lying to the application about the windows version.
      - CJefferson 10y ago
        No, it's because of missing drivers for the chipset. Try running an old Linux or bsd kernel on these new chips -- it won't work either.
        cm2187 10y ago
        But the drivers aren't part of the OS nor are they written by microsoft. I don't see why Microsoft would block the OS running on a particular generation of CPU.
najajomo 10y ago
If I were given to cynicism I would suspect it as being an attempt to favour Intel and wrong-foot AMD. It must be the fastest a processor has been rendered obsolete in the history of hardware.
sddfd 10y ago
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.
- joelthelion 10y ago
  You know another way they could increase Windows 10 adoption? By making it better, not worse, than past offerings. Adware baked into my OS? No thanks.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    But it has DX12 which is what your games crave. Also, Linux subsystem is neat and you can get powershell (great for disabling all the spyware they include which doesn't have any GUI controls).
    - andai 10y ago
      I think the problem is while they certainly made it better in many ways, they also made it worse in arguably more important ways (disrespecting the user).
- kbart 10y ago
  Rolling release is sure the right way to go as you can't support all versions ever released forever, but the problem is, that MS doesn't provide viable alternative anymore after Windows 7. I paid for Windows 7 as the OS I own, so why should I accept some adware/spyware ridden bullshit known as Windows 10 instead?
- quickben 10y ago
  "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.
ringe 10y ago
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.
- wapz 10y ago
  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).
faragon 10y ago
That is insane. One thing is having poor performance because of the lack of specific processor support, and another not being able to use it at all. Is there a bug in those new processors with backwards compatibility, or is it an evil move from MS?
- SilkRoadie 10y ago
  What is insane? Windows 7 is 8 years old. Windows 8 is 5 years old. Microsoft is still providing security fixes for what are essentially now legacy platforms. There has to be a cost in supporting these new processors. Windows runs on almost anything and the cost of testing updates across various platforms has got to be huge. I also think it is a great way to reduce fragmentation. Windows 7 is supported till 2020. However you do not want to just cut people off. If you can reduce / stop new instalations before then it will greatly reduce the number of unsupported machines when Microsoft cut the cord.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    > Microsoft is still providing security fixes for what are essentially now legacy platforms. The article is about how they are explicitly not letting people download those security fixes. > There has to be a cost in supporting these new processors. To provide new support. There is no cost in letting the existing support that works just fine continue to run.
    - jayflux 10y ago
      > The article is about how they are explicitly not letting people download those security fixes. Well... to be fair this will only affect those doing new builds, not current builds already running supported cpus. If you're installing a new Kaby lake CPU on an OS that's outright saying it doesn't support it then it's at your own risk.
CommanderData 10y ago
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. Windows 10 setup was quick & easy. Running 10 feels like I've lost control over my own OS. It updates when it wants and I have no way of turning it off. It is connected to numerous IPs I have no control over except to painfully block in hosts. Onedrive has no official uninstall option, Windows updates can no longer be postponed with 1607 and burns 15-20 mins productivity when restarting. There are a handful of services I don't need or want that I cannot disable (Wifi password sharing anybody?). It is the exact reason why I wanted to run Windows 7 in the first place. To me it feels like another forceful tactic to push me to use Windows 10 for which I have no desire. Win 7 is supported till 2020 so don't choose for me but that doesn't matter.
- morrbo 10y ago
  I'm sure you've already seen it, but using https://www.winprivacy.de/english-home/ https://www.winprivacy.de/english-home/ helps alleviate some of these issues. I completely agree with you though, the whole thing feels dirty.
  - CommanderData 10y ago
    Thank you will look at that. Just finished installing this OS. I generally enjoy MS products but this has changed my opinion. The OS isn't really any faster than 7 and the amount of road blocks I have encountered to change things to how I want them is remarkable. I have found two great resources if anyone is in the same position as me. For Uninstalling the store bloat and disabling geo-location services and other anti-privacy I used: 1) https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10 https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10 disable-services.ps1 and disable-windows-defender.ps1 2) https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script/blob/master/Win10.ps1 https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script/... Disabled too many things to list and I'll set this up to run on restart and restrict the file write perms for security. I've used pretty much the defaults but most importantly "DisableTelemetry", "DisableWiFiSense", "DisableSmartScreen", "DisableWebSearch", "DisableStartSuggestions", "DisableLocationTracking", "DisableFeedback", "DisableAdvertisingID", "DisableCortana", "DisableErrorReporting", "RestrictUpdateP2P", "DisableAutoLogger", "DisableDiagTrack", 3) Glasswire firewall or of your choice to monitor network connections.
rincebrain 10y ago
This seems like they have enormous pressure from on high to make sure Windows 7 doesn't become another XP that they have to support for 15 years By Any Means Necessary. If circumstances were different, I might even be applauding them for taking strong corrective actions against another XP doomsday scenario, or for moving to rolling release, both of which seem like great plans. The reason I'm not is that Windows 10 feels unfinished and buggy to me. I gave it more than a chance, I used it as my primary OS for a year and change - but even after all that time, I still felt like I was fighting the OS far too frequently, and when my laptop had to go out for service, I threw Windows 7 on the older backup laptop. So while I advise people who ask me to use Windows 10 if they can tolerate it, I can't say that I'm supportive of their efforts to forcibly move everyone onto their latest platform. (I'm extremely familiar with running Linux, before anyone jumps in to recommend it - the Windows installs are for running Windows-native software that doesn't run well under Linux and for doing things like lots of RDPing that are extremely cumbersome inside Linux. All machines in this story dual-boot.)
- gambiting 10y ago
  I'm in the same boat - downgraded to 7 from 10 twice now, because 10 continues to be one of the most buggy MS systems I have used so far, with overall lack of polish in pretty much every corner, with UI taking top prize for how illogical it is(Metro design everywhere, yay!) - if you can't tell how something works by looking at it for 5 seconds, it's bad design. 7 is still the most stable, bug-free and clearly designed OS at the moment, with MacOS close second(although it's slipping away steadily with every iteration).
- oxide 10y ago
  >The reason I'm not is that Windows 10 feels unfinished and buggy to me. I agree, this is the reason I also haven't moved to Windows 10. I figure by the time Windows 7 support is dropped in 2020, Windows 10 may be more polished.
- lossolo 10y ago
  I am using windows 10 from the release date and I had a lot of problems in beginning but seems that all of them disappeared with updates, I don't have them anymore.
geff82 10y ago
I love my Linux :)
gargravarr 10y ago
Once again, there is no technical reason, it's purely political to force people off an OS they're comfortable with in favour of increasing Win10 adoption statistics. Although at my company we're rolling out Win10 at a reasonable rate, we still run Win7 on many machines (I myself do because I have no need for Win10's 'features'), and if we have older software that won't run on Win10, we could be prevented from upgrading our workstations in future. What bothers me most about the rampant, furious force behind the Win10 rollout is that Microsoft are pushing it hard not just on end users, but on businesses, traditionally and still Microsoft's largest market. Businesses who've bought into the Microsoft platform and buy large quantities of licenses. The idea of taking away the power and control they have over their platforms is not going to sit well with CTOs all around the world; even Enterprise editions of Win10 have 'features' that you'd think would be consumer-only. Microsoft are backing themselves into a corner. Something's going to break eventually.
gtirloni 10y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12417399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12417399
szatkus 10y ago
The title is incorrect. Bristol Ridge is AMD APU, not Ryzen.
- thenomad 10y ago
  This could do with being higher up the thread. So WILL Win7 work with Ryzen? I ask because I'm typing this on a Win7 machine I just ordered a Ryzen chip for...
  - szatkus 10y ago
    Apparently there are drivers for Ryzen: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/am4-chipset-driver.aspx http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/am4-chipset-d...
morrbo 10y ago
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_build_windows_10_freezing_up_halp/ 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.
destroyer954 10y ago
Wait, windows 8 is on the list as well? The main part of support didn't even end, this has be a joke....
tinus_hn 10y ago
Did they support running Windows 7 on these machines before? If so, denying people the support they paid for is a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
- jayflux 10y ago
  No, afaik they have never claimed to support those cpus officially. I think up until this point it's been a "if it works it's a bonus" sort of thing
yuhong 10y ago
I do wonder why they actually go so far as to block the updates.
frik 10y ago
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.
Esau 10y ago
With Windows 10, you have no option to avoid updates. With older versions, you might not be able to get them, even if there is nothing CPU or hardware specific about the issue. Microsoft: turning software updates into a weapon.

149 points by en 10y ago

Jedd 10y ago

> 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?

tekklloneer 10y ago
Microsoft does extensive testing, not just on the "instruction set", but also the chipsets and surrounding ecosystems of the processor. It's annoying, and probably well within their ability to, but also not inexpensive.
- mdekkers 10y ago
  also not inexpensive Isn't that what we pay them not insignificant amounts of money for?
  - kodfodrasz 10y ago
    You do not buy a perpetual support license with those OSes. The cost of those operating systems was for a given list of compatible hardware. Windows 7 support ended, Windows 8 support ended, and Windows 8.1 is no longer sold, but still supported (so security patches still arrive). Like it or not, I understand MS, as backporting and re-valdating anything is a huge cost. Been there, done that, although for embedded systems.
    - einr 10y ago
      The problem here is (at least) twofold: 1) this is almost certainly a partially arbitrary limitation, since Kaby Lake is architecturally identical to Skylake, yet one is supposedly supported and the other not, and 2) AMD Ryzen hardware has already been sold with the explicit promise by the vendor that it will have Windows 7 support; Microsoft is now breaking that promise. Also, you may be misinformed regarding how Microsoft's support lifecycles work. MAINSTREAM support has ended for Windows 7 -- which means no new features -- but it still receives security patches until 2020. So does Windows 8 and 8.1. In fact, even Windows Vista still receives security patches until April 11th. It seems like what's happening here is that they pushed out a patch that maliciously UN-supports certain hardware. I was running Windows 7 on Kaby Lake fine yesterday and receiving security updates, and now they're telling me I can't. Why? All the chipset drivers are third party and have nothing to do with Windows Update.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - falcolas 10y ago
      > You do not buy a perpetual support license with those OSes. Well, when it come to Windows 10, I would say that yes, we are effectively paying for a perpetual support license. If Microsoft is comfortable throwing ads at me as a part of normal OS operation (and they are, and keep putting them in new locations I have to disable individually), I'm comfortable saying that I'm paying them perpetually.
  - tekklloneer 10y ago
    Most people are paying them money for a version of windows that works with the hardware they are buying. You won't be able to find an OEM selling win 7 on a ryzen box, for example. If you buy a separate license, you should be aware of compatibility as well.
- cm2187 10y ago
  But intel develops the chipset drivers, not microsoft.
  - kodfodrasz 10y ago
    and still they contain bugs sometimes, which need software workarounds. If interested in the topic you can surely find several examples in the Linux source codes as well.
    - seanp2k2 10y ago
      The chipset can also contain bugs which software can't work around. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Cougar_Point_chipset_flaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Cougar_Point_chip... as the most recent example I can think of.
  - tekklloneer 10y ago
    For something as core as chipset drivers, microsoft does heavy testing. They also do testing of combinations on various combinations of hardware. "It should have worked" doesn't go far when an OEM is complaining that their users are having problems.
belgianguy 10y ago
IMHO, it feels like just another hamfisted way to get the adoption of Windows 10 to increase. The whole point of Windows used to be that it would run on nearly every system, with most overhead being reactivating the license, now you'll actually find yourself re-installing an OS that refuses to work on a newer processor. They're closing the gates to their pseudo-walled garden. Windows 7/8 don't have permanent revenue streams, WIndows 10 does (or will). For all the song and dance of Windows 10 being superior, Linux seems to not care at all about what processor it runs on. And Ubuntu does just fine.
- mbreese 10y ago
  Linux seems to not care at all about what processor it runs on That's not true, there definitely are unsupported (Intel/x64) CPUs for Linux. It even prints a lovely warning on boot to not file any bug reports because you're using an unsupported CPU. But, what Linux does (often) do is make it possible to get a kernel patch or upgrade to add the missing support.
- ThrowawayR2 10y ago
  Outside of an all-volunteer ecosystem, like Linux or the BSDs, supporting and validating software on a particular processor family costs time, money, and ties up engineering resources, you know.
CJefferson 10y ago
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.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  Rough estimate for how long that would take / how much it would cost?
- cm2187 10y ago
  But microsoft isn't the one writing the drivers. Why would it block the CPU?
  - szatkus 10y ago
    All three chips on the list have integrated GPU. Graphics drivers are pretty complex these days.
mbreese 10y ago
It's not just Windows that has this issue. I recently had issues trying to add new Intel servers to an existing cluster. The new servers had a CPU that was too new to be supported by the older (CentOS 6 based) Linux OS that the cluster was running. Now, this particular problem was fixed in the kernel and pushed in the next point release by Red Hat. Unfortunately for us, it never made it to the upstream cluster OS vendor, and we weren't able to patch the supported kernel, so we were stuck for those machines.
- creshal 10y ago
  Intel's Skylake processors caused kernel panics on earlier Linux versions, but that never affected Windows, and Microsoft still supports Skylake on 7/8. And Kaby Lake is just a rebranded Skylake with higher clocks, with no hardware differences. So this is just Microsoft fucking over users.
ThrowawayR2 10y ago
> I thought all these new CPU's were supersets of the instruction set of previous gen i386/amd64 processors? Yes and no. People seem to forget that CPUs are not magical and can have bugs. On top of that, each processor family and processor stepping[0] have their own distinct bugs. (An example list can be found at [1], starting on page 8.) Well known incidents include the Pentium FDIV bug[0] and the more recent TSX bug[1] but there are a whole host of lesser ones that never reach the public consciousness because the OS works around them, e.g [2]. Needless to say, creating these workarounds takes time and effort and re-testing and that translates to money. And anything that costs money, well, ... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepping_level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepping_level [1] http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/specification-updates/xeon-e3-1200v5-spec-update.pdf http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug [3] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2464880/intel-finds-specialized-tsx-enterprise-bug-on-haswell-broadwell-cpus.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2464880/intel-finds-specializ... [4] http://www.dailytech.com/Linus+Torvalds+on+Core+2+Duo+Errata+Totally+Insignificant/article7897.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Linus+Torvalds+on+Core+2+Duo+Errata...
brudgers 10y ago
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 years old and was designed around older and almost certainly early generation Management Engine designs (and perhaps a few down the road iterations of it). But it wasn't designed with data from the field about attacks and exploits. Windows 8 is largely a reskinning of Windows 7 and probably has similar vulnerabilities in regard to accessing the CPU in the CPU if such vulnerabilities exist. Windows 10 has a somewhat different architecture and almost certainly has been designed considering ME and AMD's spin on it from the ground up and reflects all those years of experience from field deployments and the CPU vendors current roadmaps. Importantly, Windows 10 is designed with the idea that future experience will require changing the code. Anyway, my suspicion is that the internal security model of at least some contemporary chips are considered to have probable or actual vulnerabilities exposed by Windows 7/8 and the business decision is that the most effective way of mitigating those vulnerabilities is simply to not support the consumer use case of buying new hardware and then running old versions of Windows on it. The business case I am imagining runs along the lines of how much damage would Microsoft suffer if there was a problem versus how much damage it suffers from pissing off a handful of edge case users (considering that the majority of the noise will come from people who don't use Windows). [1]: example AMT, etc. https://boingboing.net/2016/06/15/intel-x86-processors-ship-with.html https://boingboing.net/2016/06/15/intel-x86-processors-ship-...
- oakwhiz 10y ago
  Is there any evidence that suggests this might be the case?
  - brudgers 10y ago
    What would count a evidence?
    - 10y ago

jimmies 10y ago

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 I am so glad to have an OS that works for me and not artificially limits me to what it thinks I should do. As extreme as Stallman was, I came to appreciate him more and more for what he has done to protect users' freedom and privacy.

Svenskunganka 10y ago
For the Photoshop part, check out Krita (https://krita.org/en/ https://krita.org/en/). Although it isn't exactly like Photoshop, a non-power user wouldn't notice the difference between the two. And Krita is really the only program I've come across on Linux that actually has a really nice UI. I still can't move over to Linux fully, even though I want to, it's just not there for me yet. Gaming being the biggest issue, but also general user experience is mediocre at best, even on a vanilla Ubuntu installation. Kubuntu is definitely better thanks to KDE, but still problematic. I still haven't tested out Elementary OS, but most my problems stems from driver issues (especially WiFi, printers and trackpads), which I believe would be the same since it's a kernel issue.
- eropple 10y ago
  I'm not a power user, but I want my tablet to work (DisplayLink on Linux is dodgy, though I did eventually get it to work--not Krita's fault but Linux in general remains a mess with hardware at times) and I want to be able to combine filter effects and behaviors with painting--and Krita has trouble with that. It is a good-not-great program (I even gave them money for it!) but it's not a Photoshop alternative unless the subset you need is pretty restricted. (The mess that is Krita/GIMP interop makes it a non-starter, IMO.)
- executesorder66 10y ago
  Depending on what you are using it for, I generally would not recommend Krita as a photoshop replacement. Here is my mini replacement list: Use Case | windows | Linux digital art | Corel Paint | Krita image editing | photoshop | GIMP simple image editing | paint.net | pinta vector image editing | illustrator | inkscape photo editing | lightroom | darktable

owenwil 10y ago

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.

0x0 10y ago
Isn't it quite the opposite though? Here, old computers get updates but new computers/cpus are killed before they get to start?
- sddfd 10y ago
  They are trying to kill windows 7/8.1 to get as much people to 10 as possible.
- einr 10y ago
  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.
ianai 10y ago
No, there you're pointing out the actual difference between Apple and Microsoft. I don't even remember the last time I directly paid for a Mac OS (10.6?). Nowadays it all comes down through the Mac App Store, a usb key, or a rescue partition. Periodically Apple discontinues which hardware sets it supports. You can still boot that same hardware on whatever the latest, most patched OS that will run on it - from Apple. They sell hardware. Intel does the exact same thing with their processors. Microsoft does the same with its products - which are software based. Per Microsoft, Windows XP is EOL. It doesn't matter what hardware you want to run it on - Windows XP is no longer supported by Microsoft. Are they attempting to push people to newer versions of Windows? Absolutely. They're essentially defining their product. This seems different on the outside but I'm not sure it is. I think they've said something about Skylake/above functions differently enough to require significant changes to Windows 7.

0x0 10y ago

I wonder if you can get a refund from Microsoft if you purchased windows 7/8 retail. Doesn't the system requirements usually just spell out "such and such CPU or better"? Suddenly the requirements have changed post-purchase to "such and such CPU or worse"? Also I wonder if this backfires on Intel. Why even bother providing 16bit and 32bit cpu modes if the CPUs aren't backwards compatible.

cm2187 10y ago
But is the CPU not compatible? I was under the impression Microsoft artificially creates an incompatibility in a shameless move to push users to an ad based OS. I wasn't aware that any cpu instruction had been removed that would prevent Win7 from running normally.
- 0x0 10y ago
  If it can't run windows 7 like older processors can, then I would argue it is not compatible.
  - cm2187 10y ago
    Only because Microsoft wrote a line of code that says if CPU is this model than do not run. There is a big irony in Microsoft writing that sort of code given the efforts they have to go through to make applications with similar code (if OS version > 7 then do not run) run anyway by lying to the application about the windows version.
    - CJefferson 10y ago
      No, it's because of missing drivers for the chipset. Try running an old Linux or bsd kernel on these new chips -- it won't work either.
      - cm2187 10y ago
        But the drivers aren't part of the OS nor are they written by microsoft. I don't see why Microsoft would block the OS running on a particular generation of CPU.

najajomo 10y ago

If I were given to cynicism I would suspect it as being an attempt to favour Intel and wrong-foot AMD. It must be the fastest a processor has been rendered obsolete in the history of hardware.

sddfd 10y ago

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.

joelthelion 10y ago
You know another way they could increase Windows 10 adoption? By making it better, not worse, than past offerings. Adware baked into my OS? No thanks.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  But it has DX12 which is what your games crave. Also, Linux subsystem is neat and you can get powershell (great for disabling all the spyware they include which doesn't have any GUI controls).
  - andai 10y ago
    I think the problem is while they certainly made it better in many ways, they also made it worse in arguably more important ways (disrespecting the user).
kbart 10y ago
Rolling release is sure the right way to go as you can't support all versions ever released forever, but the problem is, that MS doesn't provide viable alternative anymore after Windows 7. I paid for Windows 7 as the OS I own, so why should I accept some adware/spyware ridden bullshit known as Windows 10 instead?
quickben 10y ago
"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.

ringe 10y ago

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.

wapz 10y ago
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).

faragon 10y ago

That is insane. One thing is having poor performance because of the lack of specific processor support, and another not being able to use it at all. Is there a bug in those new processors with backwards compatibility, or is it an evil move from MS?

SilkRoadie 10y ago
What is insane? Windows 7 is 8 years old. Windows 8 is 5 years old. Microsoft is still providing security fixes for what are essentially now legacy platforms. There has to be a cost in supporting these new processors. Windows runs on almost anything and the cost of testing updates across various platforms has got to be huge. I also think it is a great way to reduce fragmentation. Windows 7 is supported till 2020. However you do not want to just cut people off. If you can reduce / stop new instalations before then it will greatly reduce the number of unsupported machines when Microsoft cut the cord.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  > Microsoft is still providing security fixes for what are essentially now legacy platforms. The article is about how they are explicitly not letting people download those security fixes. > There has to be a cost in supporting these new processors. To provide new support. There is no cost in letting the existing support that works just fine continue to run.
  - jayflux 10y ago
    > The article is about how they are explicitly not letting people download those security fixes. Well... to be fair this will only affect those doing new builds, not current builds already running supported cpus. If you're installing a new Kaby lake CPU on an OS that's outright saying it doesn't support it then it's at your own risk.

CommanderData 10y ago

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. Windows 10 setup was quick & easy. Running 10 feels like I've lost control over my own OS. It updates when it wants and I have no way of turning it off. It is connected to numerous IPs I have no control over except to painfully block in hosts. Onedrive has no official uninstall option, Windows updates can no longer be postponed with 1607 and burns 15-20 mins productivity when restarting. There are a handful of services I don't need or want that I cannot disable (Wifi password sharing anybody?). It is the exact reason why I wanted to run Windows 7 in the first place. To me it feels like another forceful tactic to push me to use Windows 10 for which I have no desire. Win 7 is supported till 2020 so don't choose for me but that doesn't matter.

morrbo 10y ago
I'm sure you've already seen it, but using https://www.winprivacy.de/english-home/ https://www.winprivacy.de/english-home/ helps alleviate some of these issues. I completely agree with you though, the whole thing feels dirty.
- CommanderData 10y ago
  Thank you will look at that. Just finished installing this OS. I generally enjoy MS products but this has changed my opinion. The OS isn't really any faster than 7 and the amount of road blocks I have encountered to change things to how I want them is remarkable. I have found two great resources if anyone is in the same position as me. For Uninstalling the store bloat and disabling geo-location services and other anti-privacy I used: 1) https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10 https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10 disable-services.ps1 and disable-windows-defender.ps1 2) https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script/blob/master/Win10.ps1 https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script/... Disabled too many things to list and I'll set this up to run on restart and restrict the file write perms for security. I've used pretty much the defaults but most importantly "DisableTelemetry", "DisableWiFiSense", "DisableSmartScreen", "DisableWebSearch", "DisableStartSuggestions", "DisableLocationTracking", "DisableFeedback", "DisableAdvertisingID", "DisableCortana", "DisableErrorReporting", "RestrictUpdateP2P", "DisableAutoLogger", "DisableDiagTrack", 3) Glasswire firewall or of your choice to monitor network connections.

rincebrain 10y ago

This seems like they have enormous pressure from on high to make sure Windows 7 doesn't become another XP that they have to support for 15 years By Any Means Necessary. If circumstances were different, I might even be applauding them for taking strong corrective actions against another XP doomsday scenario, or for moving to rolling release, both of which seem like great plans. The reason I'm not is that Windows 10 feels unfinished and buggy to me. I gave it more than a chance, I used it as my primary OS for a year and change - but even after all that time, I still felt like I was fighting the OS far too frequently, and when my laptop had to go out for service, I threw Windows 7 on the older backup laptop. So while I advise people who ask me to use Windows 10 if they can tolerate it, I can't say that I'm supportive of their efforts to forcibly move everyone onto their latest platform. (I'm extremely familiar with running Linux, before anyone jumps in to recommend it - the Windows installs are for running Windows-native software that doesn't run well under Linux and for doing things like lots of RDPing that are extremely cumbersome inside Linux. All machines in this story dual-boot.)

gambiting 10y ago
I'm in the same boat - downgraded to 7 from 10 twice now, because 10 continues to be one of the most buggy MS systems I have used so far, with overall lack of polish in pretty much every corner, with UI taking top prize for how illogical it is(Metro design everywhere, yay!) - if you can't tell how something works by looking at it for 5 seconds, it's bad design. 7 is still the most stable, bug-free and clearly designed OS at the moment, with MacOS close second(although it's slipping away steadily with every iteration).
oxide 10y ago
>The reason I'm not is that Windows 10 feels unfinished and buggy to me. I agree, this is the reason I also haven't moved to Windows 10. I figure by the time Windows 7 support is dropped in 2020, Windows 10 may be more polished.
lossolo 10y ago
I am using windows 10 from the release date and I had a lot of problems in beginning but seems that all of them disappeared with updates, I don't have them anymore.

geff82 10y ago

I love my Linux :)

gargravarr 10y ago

Once again, there is no technical reason, it's purely political to force people off an OS they're comfortable with in favour of increasing Win10 adoption statistics. Although at my company we're rolling out Win10 at a reasonable rate, we still run Win7 on many machines (I myself do because I have no need for Win10's 'features'), and if we have older software that won't run on Win10, we could be prevented from upgrading our workstations in future. What bothers me most about the rampant, furious force behind the Win10 rollout is that Microsoft are pushing it hard not just on end users, but on businesses, traditionally and still Microsoft's largest market. Businesses who've bought into the Microsoft platform and buy large quantities of licenses. The idea of taking away the power and control they have over their platforms is not going to sit well with CTOs all around the world; even Enterprise editions of Win10 have 'features' that you'd think would be consumer-only. Microsoft are backing themselves into a corner. Something's going to break eventually.

gtirloni 10y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12417399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12417399

szatkus 10y ago

The title is incorrect. Bristol Ridge is AMD APU, not Ryzen.

thenomad 10y ago
This could do with being higher up the thread. So WILL Win7 work with Ryzen? I ask because I'm typing this on a Win7 machine I just ordered a Ryzen chip for...
- szatkus 10y ago
  Apparently there are drivers for Ryzen: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/am4-chipset-driver.aspx http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/am4-chipset-d...

morrbo 10y ago

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_build_windows_10_freezing_up_halp/ 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.

destroyer954 10y ago

Wait, windows 8 is on the list as well? The main part of support didn't even end, this has be a joke....

tinus_hn 10y ago

Did they support running Windows 7 on these machines before? If so, denying people the support they paid for is a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.

jayflux 10y ago
No, afaik they have never claimed to support those cpus officially. I think up until this point it's been a "if it works it's a bonus" sort of thing

yuhong 10y ago

I do wonder why they actually go so far as to block the updates.

frik 10y ago

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.

Esau 10y ago

With Windows 10, you have no option to avoid updates. With older versions, you might not be able to get them, even if there is nothing CPU or hardware specific about the issue. Microsoft: turning software updates into a weapon.