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'Recommended' Windows 7 Update Is Breaking PCs With ASUS Motherboards (betanews.com)
Microsoft has made a bizarre tweak to an update for Windows 7 that can prevent some systems from booting. The Windows 7 update KB3133977 was switched from 'Optional' to 'Recommended' and Microsoft knew ahead of time the update would cause problems for some users but decided to do nothing about it. The update fixes a problem that stops BitLocker encrypting drives because of service crashes in svhost.exe. The update only causes a problem with ASUS motherboards. Microsoft says, "After you install update 3133977 on a Windows 7 x64-based system that includes an ASUS-based main board, the system does not start, and it generates a Secure Boot error on the ASUS BIOS screen. This problem occurs because ASUS allowed the main board to enable the Secure Boot process even though Windows 7 does not support this feature." The update wasn't causing many issues while it was optional. But now that it's recommended, more users have downloaded the update, and more users have experienced problems with the update. ASUS has provided a solution to the problem. Microsoft has also provided a solution, but you might not like it. Their solution in a nutshell: update to Windows 10.
Install linux.
Doesn't it appear like M$ is breaking Windows 7 and 8 to try to force "upgrades" to 10?
So, Microsoft is now deliberately bricking computers, in an attempt to force Windows 10 onto them.
Attention victim: We have locked your computer, and you won't be getting access to it anytime soon, unless you....what? No, we don't want bitcoins. We want you to install Windows 10. Give us your computer and nobody gets hurt. We swear we'll only spy on you a little.
Change the BIOS to not expect Windows UEFI. And I hate Microsoft as much as anyone.
You will upgrade to windows 10 or Microsoft will begin to brick your hardware.
This wasn't an accident.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
So, Microsoft has now lowered themselves to bricking computers in order to force users to install Windows 10.
ATTENTION: We have locked your computer and you won't be getting access to it again, unless you....what? No, we don't want bitcoins. We want you to install Windows 10. Give us your computer and nobody gets hurt! We swear we'll only use it to spy on you a little.
Thanks Microsoft for giving me yet another reason to be glad I turned off Windows Update.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
M$ loves all their little snowflakes – this is proof.
Good-Plus-Plus!
Having to change a BIOS setting that was wrong to begin with is not "bricking" anything.
Making the full-disk encryption feature work as designed IS progress. The fact that now allows an incorrect-by-default BIOS setting to be enforced is unfortunate, but since it can simply be set to the correct value, trying to equate it to forcing Windows 10 or making a computer useless is ridiculous.
If MS knew that it would screw some machines, then those machines' owners should sue MS for their time lost (+ consequential losses) for fixing this problem - for some people that will be a lot of money. Trying to shift the blame elsewhere is the sort of line that you get from a 2 bit fly by night outfit. However: I expect that they will hide behind their EULA or lawyers or similar.
er, uhm, I mean, this is why its beyond stupid to accept MS 'updates' these days. MS has jumped the shark (the old shark has a headache by now, I would guess) and is now sending malware to its users on a semi regular basis.
I have disabled all updates to win7 since ftdi-gate, last year. that was the final straw for me.
I have backups and I can restore. I don't do stupid shit online when on windows.
microsoft can go fuck themselves. for a while, they were an OK company and google/apple were the bad guys. now, sigh, all 3 are bad guys again. damn.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Maybe it's my paranoid brain, but I have suspected Microsoft may want to sabotage older OS like 7 to force people to "upgrade".
Windows 7 broke because it's LUDDITE software! Windows 10 apps apps while apping other apps!
Apps!
To never use Microsoft products again.
to have sole control over when your Windows 10 updates itself!
Fuck microsoft
it needs to be said
Go to hell. I hate you and all you horrible office applications. I gave you dozons of chances to get it right, but every single fucking time you make my life more and more unproductive. I cant believe people still put up with this shit buying your sorry spyware laiden os over and over only for you to fuck users over by abandoning standards and replacing them with pure shit. Just fuck you u sob
People have UEFI turned on? I assume these must be OEM machines.
The pistol against your forehead is merely suggestion.
Other than a few manual fixes, I don't update my computer. No surprises.
...the update could have detected that it was running on a misconfigured motherboard. It could have issued a warning, containing directions on how to make the appropriate settings... with a PRINT option. It could have refused to install on a system that Microsoft knew it the update would damage.
Microsoft chose to do none of these things. Microsoft chose to hurt people who had paid money for their operating system.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You just might find windows users requiring wine in the near future to run Windows apps on Windows too.
That is how crazy and fucked up our world has become :)
Did you have all three going on?
If not it sounds like this wasn't a problem for you.
I'm just waiting for when they break TPM 1.1 modules and demand everybody run 2.0 modules (Which REQUIRE a different motherboard thanks to changes made :l Meaning all the other DRM cpu/mobo cruft that the past 8 years has entailed.)
When I was in college I worked as a computer tech for a print and video publishing department of the university. They had a large number of Macintosh computers running Microsoft software. This was back in the day when Apple was making their transition to PowerPC processors.
The version of Microsoft Word available at the time was known to be crash happy and a new version had just come out or was going to be released soon. An interesting bug in the program would delete open files if saved too often and it would prevent saving the file under a different name. If someone reached this save limit then the file was effectively lost. It remained in memory so long as the file was open but it could not be saved to disk. At best it might be able to print it.
This was an interesting bug when it came to me and I was responsible to resolve the problem for the people working in the department. Microsoft just told people to get the next version. As this was a bug that hit an OS limitation it was possible to reduce the probability of hitting the bug by upgrading the OS. If your computer did not meet the system requirements for the next OS version, or the next Word version, the solution was buying a new computer. Every solution that Microsoft offered was going to cost money. One might place some blame on Apple for this but the problem was that Word had a memory leak, upgrading the computer or OS just meant that it was much more difficult to hit the limit before Word locked you out of saving your files and deleted what was already on the disk. When I presented the "solutions" to my supervisor I was instructed to remove Word from the affected computers, meaning the student employees had to switch around computers to get their work done.
At around this same time Microsoft had released a new version of Office. Because of some delays in publishing Microsoft offered the old version of Office to people that bought the new version, which on some level was fortunate for me. I installed the new version of Office and tried to run Word but any attempt to open an existing file or create a new one would immediately crash the computer. Complaints to Microsoft was answered with the options of using the old version or getting a new computer that did not expose this bug. As I already had a working copy of WordPerfect I only bought Office so that I could use the latest version of Word since I was getting files that were in that format. WordPerfect was IMHO a much better program and could already open the older Word files. My only consolation was that I got Excel out of the deal which came in handy for some of my math and engineering homework. I could have used other software to get the homework done but Excel was easier at the time.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
We spend eight figures a year with them, and they broke our most commonly used server model. Repeated calls and legal threats only got us insults and a spew of hate, including sexist and racist remarks. One of their VPs asked if I was wearing heels and then said he wanted to rape me with them. That's how Microsoft be. They hate their customers so much. So much.
Just ponder this for a moment what would happen if you ran Win10 on an ASUS boarded PC.
Updates brick your PC.
You cannot avoid updates.
Is MS going to pay for a new board? Or at least the cost for repairs if I can't do it myself?
Somehow I HIGHLY doubt that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just wait until Microsoft fucks up the desktop Windows UI enough to make people install KDE for Windows & for apps like Photoshop to be ported to use it.
Whenever Microsoft recommends something, do the opposite! When will people learn?
Good thing I got an SNSV motherboard.
My ASUS motherboard also had problems with some versions of refind. Sometimes it is simply unable to correctly verify the binary signature. I use my own keys to sign the bootloaders, and some builds of refind can be signed, others can not, with no logical reason.
So here, Windows 7's bootloader was changed and the ASUS bios can not verify the signature on it. Copying over the old version of bootmgfw.efi that you can find on the installation media fixes the problem and secure boot continues to work.
To protect user's systems from malware attacks, ASUS motherboards implement the Microsoft Secure Boot feature by default. This feature performs a legal loader check to boot into the OS. As Windows 7 does not support Secure Boot (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh824987.aspx), with the update of KB3133977, the system might detect inconsistent OS loader keys, resulting in boot failure.
Apparenltly the Secure Boot feature to protect from malware by ASUS didn't work.
There's been a very obvious decrease in proficiency of technicians and developers in this generation. Anyone that has been in the industry longer than 10 years can easily see this. Actually, the quality of the users on this site is direct evidence of this. Just today I encountered someone named "macs4all" *facepalm*... My beautiful lawn...
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Windows 10 is fucking skynet! Never have an OS or any piece of software been pushed as heavily before. Windows 10 must be really fucking bad for them to go to such lengths.
I don't blame Microsoft for this. Clearly it sounds like ASUS made a booboo in their BIOS and up to this point has not caused any noticeable effects. Now it is, and they need to fix it, and they did.
"Microsoft knew ahead of time the update would cause problems for some users but decided to do nothing about it."
Have you given serious consideration to the thought that they deliberately caused KB3133977 to fail to enthuse users to upgrade to Windows 10. If this strikes you as being a little paranoid, MS did exactly this, as in causing Windows apps to crash on OS/2, causing windows clients to not play nice with Netware ref ref and throwing up an error when Windows 3.1 was installed under DR-DOS.
"As Windows 7 does not support Secure Boot, with the update of KB3133977"
How does 'upgrading' an OS cause it to lose functionality?
A bios enforcing secure boot is not "bricking" your computer. Having secure boot on or off, as they say, does not affect windows 7 at all. So the solution, is to turn off the feature that you are not using anyway.
Sometimes bios updates change these sorts of settings or reset the UEFI or legacy settings. Its good to know enough about how a computer works to know about secure boot, the newer (not that new anymore) UEFI boot process and the hardware / operating system integration in newer OS's. The people on slashdot are the first people I would expect to be knowledgeable about this, yet 90% of the first 100 or so posts are like "brick this" and F-M$ that... when in reality, windows 7 is getting older but yet is so stable that this is the biggest problem its had in years :) That's the real take away for me.
It's just inevitable that when running newer hardware with older OS's, some bios settings may need to be changed from their defaults. I am happy that I can boot my skylake platform with UEFI on because asrock provided a windows 7 installer patch. It may seem extreme to some, but I am happily still running windows 7. This is another example of a work around for an older OS that doesn't "just work" on new hardware. Manufacturers often assume people are running the newest OS and set options accordingly.
I always turn secure boot off because its kind of pointless so this would not affect me or any computer I have built.
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Install linux.
Mod parent down, -1, OBVIOUS!
Hahahahah! Of course that's the fix. You're right, of course, and it is insightful in a sense, but really, that's been the solution to almost every problem Misrosoft causes.
Misrosoft: the company whose shit almost everyone is just fucking sick and tired of. Their "solution" is to install Windows 9 (er... 10).
No, the fix is to remove "Windows" altogether and install a REAL goddamned operating system, like, just as NotInHere said, is some flavor of GNU/Linux.
Microsoft is so desperate, they have plans to break your motherboard hardware, so you are forced to update to Windows 10.
Evil since XP.
Dear ASUS users. Fuck you. Sincerely Microsoft.
Last time I tried to clean install Windows 7 into an ASUS UEFI motherboard I had the remainder in the form of a boot error. That was 2 years ago.
Windows will have a taste of it's own medicine. This bullsh** with all security features that disables Linux from being installed, is now biting back. I am also glad that ASUS got this in their face. Disclaimer, using ASUS motherboard ATM(gift from friend, when I was unemployed, and my previous mobo died on me, due to me moving to different county)
Ok while we're all busy bashing MS, has anyone noticed the fact that an ASUS motherboard with UEFI Secure boot set to only boot windows somehow booted an unsigned kernel which didn't support UEFI Secureboot?
How is the real story here not that ASUS's Secureboot implementation is horribly broken and if that's the case WTF else is wrong with their BIOS?
Is MS going to pay for a new board? Or at least the cost for repairs if I can't do it myself?
Somehow I HIGHLY doubt that.
You don't contact MS, you contact the store that sold you the license.
In my jurisdiction they are legally obliged to resolve the issue or refund me. There is an option where there can let me resolve the issue myself and they reimburse me for my costs if my costs are lower than theirs to fix the problem.
Just because MS have invented their retarded business model it doesn't mean that your regular laws for purchases doesn't apply.
What the EULA says doesn't really matter that much if they didn't force you to sign it before the purchase. They can't just sell you something and then deliver something else or claim that it was a rental, not a purchase.
So I can get my ... 0 cents that I paid for the license back?
Yeah, that's worth my time. Uhhuh!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There's a reason i quit booting windows.. And this just adds one more - as i would have been an effected user, by the looks of it.
I have windows license. I moved the * to a virtual machine. Which i can easily copy, move, boot from whatever i'm running at that moment (although i replace desktop OS only every so often).
I rarely use it (Windows). Primary reason to use it is because some other people use it and request me for help. I don't need or use windows at all, thank you, life is too short to waste time on that clickable crap. I keep the VM updated every so often. And i'm not even considering booting windows ever again, after it evolved a habit of randomly deleting any non-ntfs partitions, or making itself and the rest of the system unbootable, thank you.
Windows is not an OS, it's a data destruction system. They (MS) don't give a f* about your data. It was like that 20 years ago, it was like that 10 years ago and it is now. My data more important than any narcissistic OS. And i not even started about usability issues like convenience or 'just getting things done'.
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
If you had bothered to RTFA you would realize that nothing was "bricked", the update triggers a SecureBoot warning from the BIOS which simply requires turning off SecureBoot in the BIOS, keep in mind that SecureBoot is not supported on Windows7, it is a Windows 8+ "feature". Disabling SecureBoot on a Windows 7 machine has no effect on security of the machine since it was never supported in the first place. This is a problem with Asus and how they incorrectly implemented something and has nothing to do with evil doings of Microsoft.