
Microsoft Extends Windows 7 and 8.1 Intel Skylake Support - walterbell
http://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2016/08/12/microsoft-massive-backtrack-extends-windows-7-and-8-1-intel-skylake-support/#459725937781
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0x0
Why would an operating system need special support for a more modern CPU?
Aren't intel's CPU backwards compatible anymore? Do they no longer boot in
8086 real mode?

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rogerbinns
User space remains compatible, although sometimes new instructions are added
that would cause a fault if run on an older processor. That is a known and
understood issue with things like cpuid and compiler flags being able to
choose what to do.

Privileged (kernel mode) can change. It is roughly backwards compatible, but
sometimes there are changes that when taken into account result in a more
optimal system. For example power management keeps getting more and more
complex as more processor components are affected, there are interactions and
latencies to be understood etc. If you ran older naive kernel code, it could
cause considerably higher temperatures and power consumption, possibly even
leading to throttling. It may make poor scheduling decisions leading to lower
performance. It won't take advantage of newer protection and performance
mechanisms. Worst case it may not do context switches properly leading to
bizarre crashes or information leakage.

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randiantech
Massive Backtrack seems quite a hyperbole. I would just say adjusting to the
new reality, where still millions of users are using W7 and this hardware, and
let them without, at least, security updates, seems like a horrible plan.

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zymhan
Except this is a reality that was blindingly obvious to people outside of
Microsoft, and yet they maintained their ridiculous stance for many months.

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KirinDave
Maybe it was something more of a fervent hope?

Microsoft is trying to support users and usher them to a sustainable model for
an OS delivery. The Win7 model and prior is clearly not sustainable, for a
variety of reasons.

That Microsoft is having such trouble getting people to upgrade even when
giving it away is troublesome. Not just for their bottom line, but for all of
ours. Win10's model and tech represents a lot of concrete security
improvements and stamping out old windows boxes will steadily reduce the
number of trivially exploitable machines on the internet.

We really should be rooting for them to succeed at this.

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0x0
What's trivially exploitable in an up-to-date windows 7 installation?

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rogerbinns
Have you run Windows Update on a Windows 7 installation recently? In my
experience it takes several hours to decide what updates are available!

Here are about 14 million search pages about the issue
[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=windows%207%20wi...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=windows%207%20windows%20update%20running%20for%20a%20long%20time)

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walterbell
Try this list of MS patches:
[http://wu.krelay.de/en/2016-07.htm](http://wu.krelay.de/en/2016-07.htm)

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rogerbinns
Those search results are also full of lists of patches and workarounds. Often
with followups a month later indicating Windows Update broke again.

Anyway to be clear - I don't need help keeping Windows 7 up to date. My
(downvoted) point is that there are a lot of people out there running Windows
7 _unaware_ that they are not fully updated, and hence under considerably
greater risk.

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walterbell
One would expect that Microsoft can fix this problem, especially now that
Windows 7 Skylake support is extended for several years.

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rogerbinns
Windows 7 was already supported till 2020. I am surprised Microsoft hasn't
already addressed the issue. I offer how many search pages there are as
indication of how pervasive the problem is.

In my own case (I realise this is anecdata) I only found out about the issue
by trying to upgrade to Windows 10 and having that install hang. It happened
on a workstation, laptop and virtual machine!

