'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.

Comments

Another solution

[NotInHere]

Install linux.

Re:Another solution

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

And say goodbye to every piece of Windows only software that you own.

Actually, there seems to be a *lot* of stuff that runs just fine under Wine, and even more stuff that works under Crossover.

Re:Another solution

[Opportunist]

Pretty much where I'm moving right now. Given the crap they're pulling with Win10 I eventually had to do it anyway. This now gives me a pretty good reason to not postpone it any further.

Most programs I need are either available for Linux or are platform independent. And everything else runs fine in a VM where it's not only trivial to revert to a former state if an update fucks it up, it's also nothing that needs to be connected to the internet or has to get any private information that it might leak.

Good riddance. Sorry, MS. You managed to turn yourself from required to redundant and now finally to simply dangerous to my data. And that your "solution" to the problem is telling your users to migrate to a platform that not only breaks compatibility but is also less appealing is the icing on the cake. What about those that CANNOT migrate?

You are aware that at my current position it is actually EASIER to migrate to Linux than to Win10?

Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't it appear like M$ is breaking Windows 7 and 8 to try to force "upgrades" to 10?

Re:Simple question

[thegarbz]

Doesn't it appear like M$ is breaking Windows 7 and 8 to try to force "upgrades" to 10?

Not at all. It appears as though Microsoft is supporting Windows 7 fully and patching bugs like they always do.

Now as to why ASUS motherboards didn't have an issue before this update that is a real interesting question, but since the solution is to disable a BIOS feature that was incompatible with Windows 7 in the first place the answer is no it doesn't appear like that at all.

Re:Simple question

[DaHat]

Is it really bricking when a tweak of the bios is required to recover?

A new twist on ransomware

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:A new twist on ransomware

[AmiMoJo]

No, not at all. Asus BIOS code has a bug where it enables Secure Boot even if the OS doesn't support it. It didn't come to light until Microsoft fixed their bug.

Microsoft pull a lot of shit, but this time it's not the case. The onus is on Asus to fix it, and they have.

not really broken

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Not the first time they've done this

[blindseer]

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.