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posted by cmn32480 on Friday April 21 2017, @11:08AM   Printer-friendly
from the update-this! dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday April 21 2017, @10:52PM (2 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 21 2017, @10:52PM (#497641) Journal

    there are some who willingly use Windows and fight against [it] as if that were natural and normal.

    wait what? No there aren't.

    With respect, yes there are.

    Reading the comments of articles like this [techsupportalert.com] and this [lifehacker.com.au] and this [reddit.com] you find person after person who acts as if fighting against your operating system is the most natural thing in the world; and some of them seem positively giddy at "getting one up" on Microsoft by disabling or reconfiguring some small part of the crapstorm that is contemporary Microsoft privacy and functionality policy. You don't see them as much on tech-savvy sites, unless by tech-savvy you mean "assume Windows is the center of the universe". But they're out there, keeping Windows alive by pretending that the emperor has clothes.

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  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:17AM

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:17AM (#497717) Homepage Journal

    Decades ago I saw it on mainframes -- users fighting their systems and refusing to switch. Specifically, on CDC Cyber systems. They were difficult to work with. But people had becoms so used to the hoops they had to jump through that they refused to go through the process of learning too navigate an entirely different set of hoops on s different system. It took forcibly dragging some of them to a better-designed system (in this case, a Vax) before they realised that all the pain was unneessary, and their friends moved over too.

    Now back then, I suspect, none of the problems were there because CDC had a policy of abusing their customers.

    Given the commercial cultural evolution since then, I cannot be convinced that Microsoft (and the systemd pushers, for that matter) are entirely innocent.

  • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:42AM

    by vux984 (5045) on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:42AM (#497775)

    i don't know that i agree. They may not be aware of linux and other alternatives, so fighting windows is the only option they have. They may not be aware that linux will work for them... but that assumes it would and honestly for most of those people i would argue it would probably wouldn't. People who 'fight' windows tend to be at least power users or gamers; so even if not really that tech savvy, they still likely use more advanced programs and tools, or games etc that are dependent on windows.

    They aren't people who just need a working web browser.