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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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?
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.