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Microsoft Starts Nagging Windows 7 Pro Users About End Of Support
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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story [computerworld.com]:
Microsoft will soon begin nagging users running Windows 7 Professional to remind them that the operating system is soon to be shelved.
"We are now extending the notifications ... to Windows 7 Pro[fessional] devices to ensure our customers are aware of the end of support for Windows 7 and can take action to remain productive and secure," says an Oct. 15 update to a company blog post first published in March [windows.com].
The original post confirmed that Microsoft would push notifications to Windows 7 systems in the months ahead - reprising a move it made in 2014 prior to Windows XP's retirement - but at the time, the company said nothing about limiting the on-screen alerts to Windows 7 Home Premium.
Like those earlier nags [computerworld.com], the ones showing up on Windows 7 Professional PCs should include a way to reject future notifications and a button that leads users to more information.
The April nag and this month's nag for Windows 7 Professional were delivered to systems via the update identified as KB4493132. One way to eliminate the nag is to uninstall the update marked as that KB.
As late as July, the support document associated with KB4493132 [microsoft.com] claimed that the nag would "not install on devices running Professional and Enterprise editions of Windows 7 as well as Windows Server products" because the "update is not applicable for devices in managed organizations."
The latest nag plan would seem to break that pledge.
However, the Oct. 15 revision to the March post exempts some Windows 7 Professional-powered PCs from the mandate. "Devices that are domain-joined as a part of an IT-managed infrastructure will not receive the notifications," Microsoft promised.
Windows 7 - all versions, including Professional - will exit support on Jan. 14, 2020, or in a little less than three months. According to data from analytics vendor Net Applications, approximately 490 million personal computers were still running the 2009 operating system at the end of September.
