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Microsoft Drops Windows 7 Support for Older PCs

posted by martyb on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the hanging-machines-out-to-dry dept.

Apparition writes:

Microsoft has quietly killed off Windows 7 support for older Intel PCs.

If your PC doesn't run Streaming Single Instructions Multiple Data (SIMD) Extensions 2, you apparently won't be getting any more Win7 patches. At least, that's what I infer from some clandestine Knowledge Base documentation changes made in the past few days.

Even though Microsoft says it's supporting Win7 until January 14, 2020, if you have an older machine — including any Pentium III — you've been blocked, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Here's how it happened. Back in March, the Win7 Monthly Rollup, KB 4088875, included a warning about SSE2 problems:

A Stop error occurs on computers that don't support Streaming Single Instructions Multiple Data (SIMD) Extensions 2 (SSE2).

I talked about the bugs in KB 4088875 — one of the buggiest Win7 patches in recent memory — shortly after it was released. At the time, the KB article said:

Microsoft is working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.

[...] To recap: Up until June 15, Microsoft was promising that it would fix the bug that prevented Win7 Monthly Rollups and Security-only updates from installing on older pre-SSE2 machines. After June 15, Microsoft wrote off the pre-SSE2 population, without notice or fanfare, and retroactively changed the documentation to cover its tracks.

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:48AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:48AM (#701816)

    Already a couple of years ago Microsoft deliberately changed the default SDK compiler settings to always include SSE2 instructions.

    That pretty much killed most apllication updates for any system still running AthlonXP+ or Pentium III processors. Including Firefox.

    These programs compiled has no startup code checking for SSE2 support, no meningful error just the programs crash at launch.

    So let me being skeptical about Microsoft promises to fix the "bug"

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  • (Score: 2, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:58PM

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:58PM (#701926) Journal

    My son told me what default is, in the world of cyber. It's cyber you haven't changed. Cyber the way it comes from the store. But, you can change it VERY EASILY.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by epitaxial on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:56PM (3 children)

    by epitaxial (3165) on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:56PM (#702139)

    Throw away that antique hardware already. We're approaching two decades of support now. Does Apple's compiler still output PowerPC code?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:18PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:18PM (#702181)

      Some people just can't spend the +180 euros that the lowest end replacement CPU, MB, RAM, HD would cost new.
      The current hardware AthonXP+2600, 3GB, 320GB is more that powerful enough for many people's normal use (including 720p video playback) but the software artificially doesn't follow.
      There are tons of AthlonXP+ computers now being trashed for this reason, and so a 2nd hand alternative is not much cheaper either.
      Microsoft SDK compiler is perfectly capable of generating SSE2 free code. When configured to do so, but most developers didn't even know/care.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @05:24AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @05:24AM (#702391)

        Drive around on trash day, anything you find is guaranteed to be newer.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:35AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:35AM (#702445)

          There are tons of AthlonXP+ computers now being trashed for this reason.