
Microsoft Blocks Windows 7/8 Updates on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake Systems - en
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4012982/discusses-an-issue-in-which-you-receive-a-your-pc-uses-a-processor-tha
======
jimmies
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.

~~~
mdekkers
_bricking devices by Microsoft 's friends_

Eh? What did I miss??

~~~
josteink
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.

~~~
wapz
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.

~~~
y4mi
There was also that arch Linux debacle, where users with a certain motherboard
mounted the uefi partition with write permission. Some motherboards were
bricked that way.

~~~
vetinari
The problem was deletion of UEFI variables, a bug in Samsung UEFI
implementation that should not allow that.

------
rincebrain
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.)

~~~
cptskippy
> 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 daily always makes me appreciate Windows 10. Minor enhancements
like window snapping are very nice, fixes to many/large file copies are
wonderful, and the ability to actually detect and utilize modern networking
equipment is fantastic.

I can't think of a single thing that I prefer on Windows 7.

~~~
Willamin
It feels buggy and unfinished to me because of the inconsistent ui. For
example, look at the inconsistencies of right-click context menus:
[http://nl.pcmweb.s3-eu-
west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2016/01/...](http://nl.pcmweb.s3-eu-
west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2016/01/29/menusmenusmenus.jpg)

~~~
cptskippy
I'm not sure how inconsistent UI equates to buggy but I see this argument a
lot and it's mostly unfounded. Those inconsistent UI screenshots are always
different versions of the OS or different themes. I made my own comparison 2
months ago to show that it's not that bad.

[http://i.imgur.com/nCmOrmn.png](http://i.imgur.com/nCmOrmn.png)

The other annoying thing is that this is portrayed as a Microsoft thing. Linux
Desktop UIs are horribly inconsistent but it's somehow ok. People just about
lose their minds when Apple updates the UI of iTunes or Safari out of band
with the rest of the OS.

Microsoft hasn't done much to bring GDI UI elements up to Modern UI specs and
that's the main pain point. The consistency variations between UI elements in
Modern UI apps comes down to individual Apps doing different things. That
happens on all OSes with vendors like Adobe all the time.

------
CommanderData
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.

~~~
josteink
> Yesterday I received a Gigabyte Brix i5 and wanted to run Windows 7. The
> process was painful.

Allow me to rephrase that: "Yesterday I received quite modern hardware and
wanted to run Ubuntu 9.04. The process was painful."

Would you sympathize with anyone who made such a claim? I certainly wouldn't.
Does anyone even remember its "cute" codename? Nope. It's that old.

And Windows 7 is as old as Ubuntu 9.04. It's about as obsolete as it gets.
It's time to let it go, man.

~~~
einr
_And Windows 7 is as old as Ubuntu 9.04. It 's about as obsolete as it gets.
It's time to let it go, man. _

Problem is, there's still no reasonable alternative if you need to run Windows
software. Windows 7 is the last stand of Windows that doesn't actively hate
and work against the user, so there are some very real reasons to stick with
it.

Hopefully when Windows 7 "extended support" runs out, ReactOS will be able to
run Photoshop and Cubase so there is an escape route for those of us who still
need to run legacy Windows applications. More likely it'll be Windows 7 with
GPU passthrough in a sandboxed VM with no Internet connection forever.

~~~
NetStrikeForce
What's so unreasonable about Windows 10 that you prefer to suffer all that
pain and get less out of your hardware?

------
gargravarr
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.

------
Jedd
> 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?

~~~
belgianguy
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
_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.

------
0x0
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
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
If it can't run windows 7 like older processors can, then I would argue it is
not compatible.

~~~
cm2187
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
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
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.

~~~
icebraining
If they know the vendor won't write them, it could be argued that they're just
stopping the users from making a mistake.

~~~
einr
The vendor _does_ write them, at least in some instances. Gigabyte has
explicitely announced support for Windows 7 on their new AMD Ryzen boards.

Reference: [http://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-
AX370-Gaming-5-rev-10...](http://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-
AX370-Gaming-5-rev-10#sp)

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

~~~
einr
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.

------
sddfd
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
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
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
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).

------
faragon
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
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
> 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
> 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.

------
ringe
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
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).

------
frik
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.

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

~~~
thenomad
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
Apparently there are drivers for Ryzen: [http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-
articles/Pages/am4-chipset-d...](http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-
articles/Pages/am4-chipset-driver.aspx)

------
destroyer954
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
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
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

------
geff82
I love my Linux :)

------
Esau
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.

------
gtirloni
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12417399](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12417399)

------
morrbo
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...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5yf9ed/brand_new_ryzen_build_windows_10_freezing_up_halp/))

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.

~~~
andai
Two questions: Did you have problems with w10 LTSB which you didn't have with
regular w10, or was it the same with both?

And how did you get LTSB? I read it's $7 a month but I don't understand if
anyone can get it or you need to sign up as a company.

~~~
morrbo
I found a torrent and made sure the hash matched that on the MS website. I
cant comment on the w10 non-LTSB as i've not used it, sorry.

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

------
najajomo
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.

