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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 hendrikboom on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:17AM
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.