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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Microsoft blocked the delivery of Windows Updates recently to Windows 7 and 8.1 devices powered by a next-generation processor.
The company announced the support change in January 2017. Broken down to the essentials, it means that Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Bristol Ridge processors are only support by Windows 10, and not older versions of Windows.
To hammer that home, Microsoft made the decision to block Windows Update on Windows 7 or 8.1 PCs with those next generation processors.
The company introduced patches, KB4012218 and KB4012219 for instance, which introduced process generation and hardware support detection on Windows 7 and 8.1 systems.
Windows users who run Windows Update get the unsupported hardware error prompt when they try to scan for and download the latest patches for their -- still supported -- operating system.
GitHub user zeffy made the decision to take a closer look at how the actual blocking is done on the operating system level.
Details on exactly what was done are available in the article.
Source: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/04/18/bypass-for-windows-update-lock-for-modern-processors-found/
This will be especially handy for those whose machines were entitled to updates but were mistakenly blocked from receiving them.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Friday April 21 2017, @05:35PM (1 child)
Seriously. Why?... Why?... Why?....
In the past, older OSes would usually still run on newer PC hardware. This was even expected of the hardware, although ocasionally things would genuinely break. The catch usually came in the form of drivers that required a later OS, or some fancy lame new features that required functionality not present.
Run Windows 98 on a dual CPU system? Sure, but it just would only use one. Run Windows 2000 on an Athlon X2? Sure, but you probably would be stuck in basic VGA mode. Run Windows 95 on a 5ghz machine? Yea, that is going to crash and burn without some hacks. Run Windows XP with some fancy-shmancy built-in goofy SATA controller? Well, if it doesn't offer IDE emulation or slipstreamable drivers you might have a problem - or slap in an IDE PCE card.
But it never said "you are not allowed to try this".
Congratulations, Microsoft. You have turned the PC industry in to a distributed version of Apple.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday April 21 2017, @08:11PM
Too bad Apple didn't patent this business method so that they would be the only one doing it.
The people who rely on government handouts and refuse to work should be kicked out of congress.