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Microsoft To Stop Offering Support For Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Old Surface Devices in Forums (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the nobody-has-time-for-that dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has announced that starting next month it will no longer be participating in the technical support forums for Windows 7, 8.1, 8.1 RT and numerous other products. On the software front, the company says that it will also no longer provide support for Microsoft Security Essentials, Internet Explorer 10, Office 2010 and 2013 as of July. It is not just software that is affected. Microsoft is also stopping support for Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, Surface RT, Surface 2, Microsoft Band and Zune. Some forums will be locked, preventing users from helping each other as well.

35 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Bummer by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Where will the 15 Surface owners go to for support?

    1. Re:Bummer by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 2

      I wonder whether the hardware parts are just a smokescreen for trying to make it harder to continue with Windows 7 instead of giving in and moving to 10 if you don't really want to.

      Ironically, given the average usefulness of Microsoft's forums, they may have just improved the search result signal/noise ratio enough that they've actually extended the useful lifetime instead...

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      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    2. Re:Bummer by CastrTroy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm one of those people with Surface 2 RT. To be honest, the support has been a lot better than I've seen with any Android device I've ever owned. 4.5 years after I bought it, and I'm still getting my regular monthly software patches. Microsoft may have made some mistakes with the Windows RT line (mostly only allowing signed code), but support is one of the areas where they were strong, even long after the platform was declared dead.

      I still use my Surface 2 to this day, and find it hard to justify getting something new, because it still works quite well as a tablet/media consumption device, which was my primary purpose for it.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    3. Re:Bummer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Eliza just scans for random keywords than gives pre-baked responses in an effort to fool the reader into believing the question was actually read.
      The fact that Eliza even tries would be an improvement.

    4. Re:Bummer by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Yes and No, my experience has been mixed. Between my Surface Pro 3 and my wife's Surface Pro 4 and all the shitty hardware that comes with it, MS has been very good with support for the hardware on the devices. Both of our SPs have been replaced under warranty, we've gone through 4 pens and 3 keyboards between us too.

      Software support from MS on the other hand is a miserable failure. Getting security patches is not support. It's base line minimum expectations. Their replies and presence in the forums are mostly windowdressing with MS's reps regularly offering suggestions that have absolutely zero to do with the questions users post.

      Then there's software quality itself. For an entire generation I put up with problems on my SP3 being slow to wake when hitting the power button. This was entirely to do with the SP4 keyboard (initially listed as compatible with the SP3, and finally the only available accessory for the SP3) and it's shitty driver. Some users on reddit effectively reverse engineered the problem and had very detailed information about how and why the bug occurs. MS's response? ... Well they fixed it when they released the SP5 and had to ship another driver to the SP3 users. They completely ignored users within support and within warranty for a simple driver fix for close to 18 months.

      My reply to Microsoft no longer "helping" users on their forums, ... thank god, users may get some proper advice now.

    5. Re:Bummer by Duhavid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can only speak for myself, but the UI in Win10 is not the main objection

      Not being able to manage when updates are applied
      Telemetry

      These are my issues.

      I understand that MS changes the UI so that people do not wonder why they are spending money on an update.
      What I don't understand is why people fall for that.

      --
      emt 377 emt 4
    6. Re: Bummer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'm sorry this is not the correct forum for your post. Please repost to the correct forum. Thank you, and we hope this has resolved your issue.

    7. Re:Bummer by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 2

      Our deal-breaking reservations are much the same, though it seems the UI is also significantly worse than 7 because of the weird-Metro-hybrid doing-things-in-more-than-one-place factor. On the other hand, there also seem to be few good reasons to upgrade. There don't seem to be many big improvements even today compared to 7, except that 7 is no longer getting updates for compatibility with newer hardware and communications standards, and only has a limited window left for security updates. The most compelling reason not to use 7 on a new PC today seems to be that Microsoft have forced vendors to stop supplying it, so unless you're on a volume plan it's probably not available any more. That move pretty much tells the whole story about how good 10 is and how desperate Microsoft are to get everyone to move anyway.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    8. Re:Bummer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Eliza doesn't try, it just is (and it was available for my Radio Shack Model 1 back in the day, written in Level 2 BASIC!). Unfortunately, the original comment is right on - it's been at least a year or 2 since I've seen a response allegedly from MS in any MS forum that hasn't been obviously a bot pasting mostly irrelevant text. Any actual support in MS fora has come from other users, not MS. OTOH, if that's the level of "support" MS is willing to provide, then the least they could do is leave the fora open for others in the "Community" to help with some light AI moderation to contain the trolls.

      At least with Linux support fora, if you can get past certain attitudes, there's community support for versions back to arbitrary numbers, not just the latest ones. But then, Linux distro publishers are usually not trying to get you to buy the latest version and abandon one that works...

  2. How Old?? by Idimmu+Xul · · Score: 4, Informative

    Surface RT - 2012
    Surface Pro - 2013
    Surface Pro 2 - 2013
    Surface 2 - 2013

    How does this compare to apple? I think macOS High Sierra runs on laptops from 2009 onwards?

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    1. Re:How Old?? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Funny

      Welcome, time traveler from the past! How's the 21st century treating you?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:How Old?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Have you not used Linux since 1997?

      That was the most terrible attempt at trolling I've seen in a while. Up your game, or at least update your game.

      HINT: Complain about systemd or pulseaudio. That always works these days. Doesn't matter what your complaint is or how badly formed it is, you'll get everyone to agree with you if you use those trigger words.

    3. Re:How Old?? by tepples · · Score: 2

      Hardware incompatibilities continue to occur in the 21st century, though not nearly as often or as harshly as before.

      I installed Xubuntu 18.04 on a new Dell Inspiron 11 3000 series laptop (Pentium CPU, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD) two days ago, and my Xubuntu partition feels much faster than Windows 10 on the same hardware. But I still had to edit a config file as root to get the Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys to work. The laptop's keyboard controller has a bug such that those four keys send only make (key down) codes, not break (key up) codes. Those keys also have problems in some Windows applications, but compared to X.Org X11, Windows is by and large more automatically tolerant of keys that only make and do not break.

    4. Re: How Old?? by mSparks43 · · Score: 2

      click the playonlinux button, then click excel.
      Never thought that would need saying on slashdot :(

  3. Oh by M0j0_j0j0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Like you can actually get any help in Microsoft forums.....

    1. Re:Oh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I just love how you almost always end up with some indian dude telling you how to reboot in 10 steps as a solution for everything.

    2. Re:Oh by bobby · · Score: 2

      Not quite everything- after the reboots, you reinstall, remember?

    3. Re:Oh by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree. In these forums 90% of the time the response I see coming from a Microsoft representative is "generic way of cleaning your pc" or "how to reinstall or restore to the previous version", and most of the time the answer has NOTHING to do with the question that was asked. Sometimes I think it's an automated response from a bot, because it's too clueless to have been the response of a human being.

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    4. Re:Oh by PhoenixFlare · · Score: 2

      Exactly.

      The Microsoft "Engineers" on their forums have always been borderline incomprehensible and/or comparable to chatbots dispensing useless pre-baked responses. Who cares if those go away?

  4. That's a load of crap... by fallen1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    considering Windows 7 doesn't EOL until 2020. I think Microsoft needs another pimp slap from the anti-trust folks in the US Government. This is a blatant attempt to make currently popular versions of its operating system appear less secure in an effort to consolidate everyone under Windows 10.

    After months of usage, I've come to the same conclusion as when it was first announced -- Windows 10 sucks. I don't need a tablet/phone interface on my desktop. Their attempt at giving us a "regular" desktop really doesn't cut it either. I do not need the internals obfuscated so that "normal" users find it difficult to affect them as that makes it difficult for IT staff to reach them as well unless I learn a whole bunch of new shortcuts. Shortcuts that are there just because Microsoft decided to change how access worked; not because workflow is better or follows the Vulcan principles of logic -- just because they needed a UI change.

    --

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    Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
    ~Anonymous~

    1. Re:That's a load of crap... by EvilSS · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Mainstream support for Windows 7 ended on January 31, 2015. The 2020 date is extended support, which doesn't cover "complementary support".

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    2. Re:That's a load of crap... by klingens · · Score: 5, Informative

      Windows 10 is a 100% phone/tablet interface. You can easily verify that yourself: they did away with the right mouse button.
      I noticed it the first time with my 3G WWAN: before, Windows 7, I could right-click on it and "connect": immediately online. Afterwards with Windows 7 I had to doubleclick and then connect through dialogs. Much more clunky, takes longer, very much phone like.

      The whole "settings" abomination works the same way. All the menus are made phone compatible.

      Correction: not a 100% phone interface. They are apparently incapable of actually fully replacing the old control panel what the "settings" crap is supposed to do.

      So yes, I have "tested" Windows 10 and running it. I'm not sure if you are however.

    3. Re:That's a load of crap... by FictionPimp · · Score: 2, Informative

      I honestly don't have a problem with windows 10. In fact the powershell support has become so great that I'd say windows 10 (with the exception of updates without the enterprise version) is the easiest version of windows for a professional to manage. I also find it odd that IT staff would not be constantly learning and growing their skillset. I'd hope to god they are not managing windows by using RDP or visiting each machine. This is the realm of group policy, powershell, etc. Learn it or get relegated back down to level 1 help desk.

    4. Re:That's a load of crap... by swb · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There are so many misfeatures in the Win 8.1 and Win 10 user interface, I wish I could read transcripts of the highly paid experts at MS who discuss them (or don't..). It seems beyond imaginable that actual UI experts or human factors experts actually have a say, or get more than a token comment in over marketing and strategy people who want to push a long-term strategy.

      Right now my favorite is the burying/obfuscation of the "old" control panels for the Win 10 settings screens. You used to be able to get to them by right-clicking the start menu, but now you have to search for them. Some Win10 settings actually pop up old control panel interfaces.

      I don't doubt MS has some kind of user testing data to validate their decisions, but I can't help but wonder how much selection bias is built into their decisions -- cherrypicking testers who think think will validate their decisions vs. actual random samplings of existing users.

      I think MS might actually just be gambling hard on some futurism, assuming they have existing users so locked in it doesn't matter what changes they make, and focusing all their UI changes on people 16-22 because they represent the future.

    5. Re: That's a load of crap... by Junta · · Score: 2

      I was thinking the same thing, but I right clicked on the network icon and it really doesn't give options except to start one of a couple of dialogs.

      I don't have windows 7 handy, but I would be willing to believe that the right click context menu I'm seeing is pretty crippled compared to what they probably had in Windows 7.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    6. Re:That's a load of crap... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The technologies you mentioned are not a silver bullet. PSH works until you hit a bug with PowerShell remoting that makes it simply not work any more without any useful error. It is also incredibly slow in comparison to SSH and probably the reason that it will be replaced by it in the future as the preferred transport method (it works right now in the latest versions).

      Some cmdlets are unstoppable even in the new console window in Windows 10. You can press Ctrl+C all you want, but for some operations it won't do anything.

      Doing startup scripts with PSH is insanity, especially when the target computer doesn't have a fast SSD. The runtime is .NET-based so it has to load *a lot*. Simple .cmd or cscript.exe-based scripts are orders of magnitude faster than anything possible with PSH short of compiling your own C# programs.

      Group policy only works when it feels like it and debugging it is a pain. If you follow Microsoft's guidance and make it asynchronous it gets even better. The logs, if they even exist, rarely provide useful information as well. Not to mention the Group Policy Preferences which were just kludged in as an afterthought and are probably not even tested with Windows 10 any more.

    7. Re: That's a load of crap... by klingens · · Score: 2

      The right click (sometimes) works,yes, after all it's the same mouse with the same buttons, but there is nothing there. Since tablets don't have it, Windows cannot put anything relevant there or the UI is non-usable to tablet users or with touch monitors another highly publicized Windows 10 "feature". The way they gave a crippled start menu back for example where you cannot drag and drop inside the menu with the mouse anymore: too awkward on tablets I guess. No, the quicklinks at the right do not count. Inside the actual start menu.
      The original start menu took Microsoft more than 10 years to get it to the point of Windows 7 where it was halfway decent. Expect the Windows 10 one to take probably equally long.
      The settings dialogs which are all designed for left click only, etc. Everything shows, the UI had to be made 100% tablet compatible.
      Even when they fucked up and still kept control panel around cause Settings is utter shit, functionality wise. And now 6 or so "versions" of Windows 10 later, they still haven't managed to clearly develop it further or fix it in any way.

      Windows UI is a clusterfuck of epic proportions. And there is no actual progress, instead we get bullshit like "creators update". I don't want to create with my damn OS, I want it to run programs to create, and letting me easily start those is the only job of the OS. Which it is failing. It's not the job of the OS to create, that what Adobe or whatever is for!

  5. Microsoft forum experience. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    U: I have a problem with xdog.dll not regestering and giving result code 0x32De32

    Top Solution--------
    MS: Hi this is sanjay. I will help you with this problem now. Have you tried system restore: **Irrelevant ms KB article**
    I will now walk you through windows re-install **Irrelevant KB article** Link to irrelevant microsoft fix it.

    Other solutions:
    U: You need to replace the dll with version 32.64.99 and try again.

    So no big loss.

  6. Yay by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Anyone else notice that Microsoft products work better after they no longer support them?

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  7. Who cares by butzwonker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In my experience, the advice on Microsoft forums always boils down to the following anyway: Save all of your data an reinstall Windows from scratch.

    The advice is pretty useless in many circumstances, but since most people don't have the time&money to sue Microsoft for their own loss of time & money, the advise always works for Microsoft. If I could bill Microsoft for every hour I've spend fixing what their operating system messed up, I could be a rich man...

  8. Windows RT was a huge screw up by MS by sjbe · · Score: 2

    I'm one of those people with Surface 2 RT. To be honest, the support has been a lot better than I've seen with any Android device I've ever owned.

    If that isn't damning with faint praise I'm not sure what is.

    Microsoft may have made some mistakes with the Windows RT line...

    "May have"? You don't need the qualifier. It was a huge and expensive fuck up on their part. It was an intentionally and needlessly crippled product with no obvious benefit to customers that was outperformed by better devices running uncrippled Windows and it was an object lesson in terrible branding. (you don't call something Windows when people have an existing expectation for what that means) Microsoft tried to create a device in between their smartphones and PCs when they didn't need to and they fucked it up.

    I still use my Surface 2 to this day, and find it hard to justify getting something new, because it still works quite well as a tablet/media consumption device, which was my primary purpose for it.

    That's fine but there were/are better devices available to do that which are less limited and more useful to most of us.

  9. Re:How about criticizing actual problems? by Train0987 · · Score: 2

    Can you explain why they fractured the Control Panel / Settings? Why it takes 15 clicks between two/three different panels now to adjust a network connection?

  10. So sadly self-destructive, it is difficult to joke by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 2

    "... Windows 10 is useless as an operating system, it's just a toy made by monkeys."

    Joke: Yes, Windows 10 is useless. However, the World Huge Association of Monkeys, WHAM!, says you are not sufficiently respectful of monkeys. Monkeys act in their own self-interest.

    With Windows 10, Microsoft has been extremely self-destructive. If Microsoft had spent a billion dollars running ads trying to get negative responses from professionals who are knowledgeable about computers, those ads would not have been as effective as Windows 10 at destroying whatever positive thoughts people had about Microsoft.

    Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."

    7 ways Windows 10 pushes ads at you.

    Microsoft again forced upgrades on Win10 machines specifically set to block updates (March 12, 2018)

  11. It's mostly the UI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I agree that spyware and telemetry are serious problems. But I think you have under-appreciated exactly how terrible the "new" UI is. They basically have gotten rid of everything that we use to tell one UI element from another. Everything looks like a background element. Nothing looks like something you can actually interact with. There are no borders to help determine where one element ends and another begins. Title bars blend in with the rest of the window. It's like someone on some seriously powerful drugs is making the UI decisions.

    I understand that MS changes the UI so that people do not wonder why they are spending money on an update.

    That's true for previous Windows OSes. Although I wouldn't say "changes" in this case. Change would be like making Windows look like KDE or some other different but still usable UI. For this case I would say, "royally fucked." And nobody actually buys Windows 10. They either got force upgraded during the force upgrade period or they bought a new computer and didn't know how to get a better OS.

    What I don't understand is why people fall for that.

    This makes it sound like you are trolling. Nobody "falls for" the Windows UI. That doesn't make any sense.

  12. Re:What is Microsoft's main purpose? by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Funny

    But I came here for an argument!