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Microsoft Quietly Cuts Off Windows 7 Support For Older Intel Computers (computerworld.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: If your PC doesn't run Streaming Single Instructions Multiple Data (SIMD) Extensions 2, you apparently won't be getting any more Win7 patches. At least, that's what I infer from some clandestine Knowledge Base documentation changes made in the past few days. Even though Microsoft says it's supporting Win7 until January 14, 2020, if you have an older machine -- including any Pentium III -- you've been blocked, and there's nothing you can do about it.
...if you're not an idiot and don't go to random sites/click "run" on downloaded files, you're reasonably safe...
Excellent, using your idea, we don't need to patch anything ever again. The answer has been right in front of us all this time, we would have never figured it out if you hadn't come along. I won't even need to help older relatives when they fuck up their PCs, I'll just print out your post and stick it below their screen
Windows 7 is the Best Windows. , better than all versions which came before it and after it. The only thing it lacks is out of the box USB 3.0 support. The drivers not on the install disk but you ca add it.. That's all. It's everything you need.
Windows 8 was a stupid movie. "Let's change the UI, because, fuck it, let's change the UI." Nothing else.
And Windows 10 with its intrusive spying and adverts truly sucks ass. It didn't add anything of value either.
Microsoft is pushing out new versions because no one has gone for their subscriptions so new versions is how they make money. That is all.
> b0s0z0ku : Also, if you're not an idiot and don't go to random sites/click "run" on downloaded files, you're reasonably safe.
Wow. You really are an idiot. Precisely the sort of idiot who needs to be protected with security patches.
Well said. You responded far more politely than I would have to a person is a living, breathing example of the kind of fuckwit who for years helped to keep Linux from being widely accepted. Newbies would drop by a Linux site hoping for help. They would ask questions that were very elementary but not stupid, often after having invested hours trying to fix a problem themselves. Far too often the "advice" they got from twatwaffles like this was that they were morons who shouldn't be allowed to own a computer.
Some day, perhaps creatures like this will have their noses rubbed in the fact that for most people, a computer is a means to an end, not the end itself.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
So, if a company just decides they don't want to honor the promises they made, they should be able to walk away whenever they want? That's incredibly moronic and you know it. Microsoft led customers to believe they would receive support through the EOL date. Prematurely ending support is going back on their word, and it shouldn't be legal for them to do this.
Doesn't change the fact that most malware is actually installed by its users, voluntarily. And that most Pentium III systems are likely running in specific, non-Internet-connected applications.
The last Pentium III chip ever created was released in 2001.
2001. That is 17 years ago. Last computer built with this ancient technology is probably from 2005, over ten years ago. Much of the hardware machinery, such as mechanical drives and fans, should've stopped working by now. If they miraculously still work, Linux is a prime candidate to run on this super-old system for that last mileage.
Face it, Windows 7 is on it's death bed, and if you do not like it, go Linux or go home. :)
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
"And that most Pentium III systems are likely running in specific, non-Internet-connected applications." = You made that up from pure spun hubris. You're an idiot sometimes when you do this.
Last P-III was 2001 or 2002. People/companies generally nurse such old hardware along because they have to (it controls factory hardware, etc), not because they want to.
Doesn't change the fact that Windows 7 officially supports Pentium IIIs (32-bit x86 1GHz or higher) and has stated support to 2020. And that this inherently means if they're running in specific applications and are exploited because of malware because of a lack of updates, Microsoft can be sued through the ass not to mention be potentially brought up on fraud charges*. But, yea, let's try to spin this into being a minor issue and wholly the users fault.
PS - Even using your out of the ass numbers of 0.5% of computers (really using just Windows 7 sales (300 million), which is a smaller number), and you're talking 1.5 million computers. You don't think 1.5 million computers as part of a botnet would be a big thing? Or replacing 1.5 million computers early would be a big thing? Seriously, the sheer scale of expected support should have shut down Microsoft considering such changes.
Of course, the real lesson here is to cut Windows products out of your environment as much as possible. Any company that believes it can just mandate substantial changes to your business so you can keep accepting patches to fix ITS bugs is a trainwreck.
* Large corporations quite specifically are maximizing the life of bought hardware and scheduling software purchased based upon a support cycle. Anything that upsets that can be a massive loss.
Sure, most people do not run Win7 on computers that old. But there are embedded systems like displays, measurement equipment, medical equipment, etc. that will be affected by this and MS was fine doing this deceptively and without warning and without giving people time do make arrangements. They also did it _while_ these systems are officially compliant with the Win7 minimum requirements. That is just completely unacceptable, but so very much like MS. No honor, no care for the customer, just always after the biggest profit they can get for cheap.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Embedded systems like medical equipment, displays, measurement equipment, etc.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Not importance-wise. Likely applications that will be networked is medical imaging, display boards, some measurement equipment, SCADA system front-ends, etc. This is a real fail on their part and, if I were up to me, they would be liable for any and all damage they cause.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Even using your out of the ass numbers of 0.5% of computers (really using just Windows 7 sales (300 million), which is a smaller number), and you're talking 1.5 million computers. You don't think 1.5 million computers as part of a botnet would be a big thing? Or replacing 1.5 million computers early would be a big thing?
Most of those have already been replaced and sent off to the metal recyclers. Congratulations, you managed to offer even dumber numbers than the GP.
Of course, the real lesson here is to cut Windows products out of your environment as much as possible. Any company that believes it can just mandate substantial changes to your business so you can keep accepting patches to fix ITS bugs is a trainwreck.
"Linux Set To Shed Nearly 500k Lines Of Code By Dropping Old CPUs"
https://www.phoronix.com/scan....
it's not that it is older architecture that they're dumping support for, it's HOW THEY'RE DOING IT.
windows 7 has a published EOL. they aren't adhering to it.
they release buggy patches. they said they'd fix them. they are not.
__
similarly, and even more fucked up, microsoft killed support for windows 7 and 8.x for *NEW* processors (amd am4 bristol ridge/ryzen, intel kaby lake and newer).. and tried to nix it for skylake as well. also violating their own published lifecycle.
THIS IS NOT OK. regardless of the age of the affected systems. they have policies, we expect them to fucking follow them.. just as they expect us to abide by their draconian license agreements and bless their invasive data gathering and 'privacy' policy.
I keep saying - This is just the thin end of the wedge. Or in this case, now a slightly thicker part of the thin end of the wedge; It'll keep getting worse and worse until 'no support in 2020 but you can still use it on existing systems' slowly turns into 'deliberately crippled on all systems so you have to use windows 10'
Don't listen to all these astroturfers putting down old systems just because they're old.
If they could run Win7, there's no good reason why the goal posts should suddenly be moved.
Why do American nutjobs keep flooding the World Wide Web with their private political opinions? Nobody gives a shit about your baboon of a President or your fruitcake political opinions.
I'm not a member of the ReactOS project, just shilling as an alpha user who's impressed with the progress so far.
Yes, the project has been around for two decades, but it's made remarkable strides in the last couple of years. Give it two more—coincidentally when all support for Win7 ceases—and I think people will be pleasantly surprised by its usability. My only concern is that the Kremlin has dumped a bunch of money into the project, and I'd feel better if someone did an independent security audit of the code to see that Vlad didn't have some backdoor put in.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
* Large corporations quite specifically are maximizing the life of bought hardware and scheduling software purchased based upon a support cycle. Anything that upsets that can be a massive loss.
Large corporations that are still demanding support for 20-year old systems are not relying on a reasonable support cycle. They're acting like a bunch of whiny cheap-asses who would be willing to spend FAR more money fighting fine-print support bullshit in court than they would simply upgrading their hardware.
You're far from alone in that, my friend. A bunch of people I know got the same kind of treatment. I stayed with Apple and Microsoft for business reasons. I might finally start looking at Linux again soon. It won't be because I think the fanbois' manners have improved, but because I really don't like the "you don't own it, you only rent it" approach to software the big boys are taking.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Brick the Windows 10 machines too and be done with it.
with the way some of these OS patches have been going, I would like to just subscribe to network and driver stack patches somehow.
win 10 patches.. are they even patches? who the fuck knows. it seems they just do them to promote their apps and to reset settings from people so they could be tricked to using them.
as far as the support for win7, well, dunno. ask your money back I suppose, they're obviously lying about their pr in regards to it.
also win7, wtf are the patches for again? network stack? if you got local binary running you might just as well have admin rights anyways.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Do a Google search for: Windows 7 EOL and you will get the following:
Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows 7 on January 13, 2015, but extended support won't end until January 14, 2020. This applies as long as you have Service Pack 1 installed.
So, Windows 7 is already well beyond the end of the normal support cycle for consumers, and the extended support is going away in another 1.5 years. If people insist on holding on to what is soon to become a dead end, then you run into the problems you see with Windows XP, where getting it to run on a new computer is problematic and requires a virtual machine, because there are no drivers for the newer components. Want to put antivirus or other programs on there, nope, they won't run on anything older than Windows 7 currently.
The longer you hold on to an OLD product, the more difficult it will be to migrate your programs/data, and at some point, you just won't be able to get your old programs running on newer computers. Then, you end up needing to really hunt for parts to fix your old computer. If you are on a laptop, it becomes even more difficult to deal with a hardware failure due to a lack of standardization in the components in a laptop.
I understand that many people don't like some of the things in Windows 10, but the bulk of those things can be removed or turned off, and it is worth the effort to modernize NOW, before you end up stranded and without a way to move to a new computer when your old machine needs to be upgraded.
Why is it unreasonable to expect an OS to be supported until the date published by its developer a very long time ago?
Maybe those old systems are redundant or obsolete. Maybe they're not. I don't know, and neither do you, and neither does Microsoft.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Actually the indicator in the Steam hardware survey of a PIII would be lacking SSE2, currently Steam is showing 100% of computers surveyed as having both SSE2 and SSE3. Even then the vast majority are post Core2 even with support for SSE4.1 and SSE4.2. I honestly suspect this is a non-issue that affects primarily industrial applications, and honestly most of them are probably running XP without a care in the world. I was actually quite surprised by this story in the first place because I had been under the impression windows has required SSE2 since Vista.
Any and all content posted above may be ignored, considered irrelevant, or otherwise dismissed.
Do you know anybody using WIn7 on a PIII, or are you just complaining because it is Microsoft?
RHEL 5
SLES 11
Solaris 10
The shoocker for me was that I can't put any IBM OSes on the list (AIX, z/OS).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
One, a lot can change in 20 years in a community.
Two, Windows support communities can similarly be terrible.
The interesting difference is that for Microsoft, you can't (legally) be using it without some recourse for professional support. For Linux, you can either pay and have support or use it and have to resolve in the community.
Of course, based on what I've seen in MS community boards and formal responses, if you hit something 'weird', the community in MS has a better shot at figuring out than the officials from Microsoft...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Also with Windows 10, Windows 10 is 'eternal', but your device running Windows 10 can at any point have it's support yanked, but "windows 10" is still supported, it's just that your device can no longer get updates....
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The (non-mobile) P3 hadn't been updated for seven years when Windows 7 came into being. And it's doubtful any devices were built in 2009 that ran Windows 7, which at the time was a new, untested, operating system.
I would assume you wouldn't see an MRI or other safety critical device running Windows that run Windows 7 for several years after 2009, probably 2012 or later. And it's hard for me to imagine that anyone would manufacture a device after 2012 that used a chip that most probably wasn't even in production at that point - using older hardware is one thing, but using discontinued hardware with no support from the manufacturer is quite another. Where are you going to get the chips? eBay?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Any Linux distros supported for free for almost 9 years? Any of you dorks planning to answer the question or is it tantrum time again?
Many, many people agree with what you said. Microsoft is shockingly self-destructive. A few of the many, many negative articles:
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)
Yes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
RHEL5 released in 2007 and is in extended support until 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
SLES11 came out in 2009, LTSS ends in 2022.
For fun, Solaris from 2005 is supported until 2021:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So while OSX and community distributions and Ubuntu LTS don't go that far, there are OSes that do. This is one reason why people snicker at Ubuntu's proclamation of 'Long Term Support', when the competitors have so much longer support cycles.
Of course, I wouldn't wish a RHEL5/SLES11 desktop on anyone, they are missing so many features in the current distros. Then again, XP also was pretty pathetic desktop experience wise when it was still popular relative to contemporary Microsoft desktops.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Linux came out between versions 3.0 and 3.1 of Windows.
Linux was nothing more than a hobby project for several years though a promising one. I was in college when it came out and for desktop use it wasn't even remotely competitive until after Windows 95 dropped. The only people to touch it were the most serious of unix geeks who loved it. (myself among them) The earliest distros were useful but weren't even close to ready for use by the general public.
Lots of PCs were coming with Windows at that point, but most software was still DOS (since Windows was an app rather than an OS) and very few file formats required non-DOS software.
Windows after version 3.0 was not an application. To call it one really misrepresents how it worked. It was really an OS layer that ran on top of DOS. Calling Windows 3.1 an application layer is as incorrect as calling the World Wide Web the Internet. And if you think there wasn't a lot of Windows specific software in 1991 (when linux 0.1 dropped) then you weren't there.
I understand your point, but you should make it without revisionism.
Not a problem since there isn't any. I used some of the earliest versions of linux that came out when I was an undergrad. Linux was in no way, shape, or form ready to supplant Windows on the desktop at that time. By the time it was ready, Windows 95 had already dropped and the game was effectively over for control of the PC desktop from then on.
Why is it unreasonable to expect an OS to be supported until the date published by its developer a very long time ago?
It's not unreasonable but it might be ill advised.
And it makes for a real interesting conversation for what you will use for your next generation machinery controllers.
It's easy for us to rant on Slashdot about how stupid these companies who might be expecting say the PC controlling a huge forge to be supported for the length of time it was stated to be supported. Fr the PC jockey's view, 5 years is ancient.
But - and here's the kicker - when the manufacturer of that 100 million dollar forge is trying to make the sale - the buyer is going to ask about what operating system controls the forge. And if Microsoft OS - how will they know how long Microsoft will provide support will be asked. Finally - what happens if Microsoft drops support. Two years early? 5 years early?
The number of devices that are left hanging are small. But odds are they are big and expensive. And the takaways are two:
Microsoft has decided they don't have to offer support for as long as they say they do.
You cannot trust what they say.
This lack of veracity would have a rather large impact on purchasing decisions.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It's amazing to me how often Windows is 10-20 years behind Linux in such basic features. Here's a screenshot from Gnome 1.0 in 1999. The 2x2 panel at the bottom left is for switching between virtual desktops (workspaces). It was included in 1.0 because it was considered a basic feature in Linux by 1999.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
And it makes for a real interesting conversation for what you will use for your next generation machinery controllers.
Yeah I'm kind of amazed how little consideration purchasers of this expensive equipment typically give to these sorts of important questions. I run a manufacturing company and I'm SUPER careful about investing in software or hardware that I think even has a chance of not being supported in future years. If something runs Windows that's potentially fine if I'm only expecting the equipment to have a service life of 3-5 years. Anything longer than that and there had better be a very specific service contract involved or it needs to run a system that doesn't depend on a third party for support. The presses and other heavy equipment we use in our company have software written by and for the company that sells the press and they can support it 100% for the expected life of the device. No third parties are involved and that's to our benefit.
Microsoft has decided they don't have to offer support for as long as they say they do.
Which is a risk you take whenever you depend on a third party who is not a signatory to the equipment purchase. You're basically making an assumption unless someone who actually works for Microsoft is in the room and signs a commitment obligating Microsoft for support.
Bingo.
BTW, was this change in support reported by Microsoft, or just inferred from secret documents a third-party claims to have seen?
The patches offered for Windows 7 today are very infrequent, almost non-existant, and to be honest, unless your PIII computer is supporting a browser and is connected to the internet, Windows updates are likely irrelevant at this point - the vast majority of OS bugs were resolved long before this support rumour started.
Ken
"Linux Set To Shed Nearly 500k Lines Of Code By Dropping Old CPUs"
This is not comparable.
Linux dropped support for very obscure CPU architectures. Consumers are unlikely to possess these architectures at all. Corporate customers can still get the code from old Linux versions which are still available online under the GPL.
Microsoft is dropping support for extremely mainstream architectures which still have millions of users. And there's no alternative to download the code and recompile it in the future.
"Linux Set To Shed Nearly 500k Lines Of Code By Dropping Old CPUs"
This is not comparable.
Linux dropped support for very obscure CPU architectures. Consumers are unlikely to possess these architectures at all.
When it was announced various users did complain. "Obscure" is not constant across platforms. With Linux being a re-use path for old PC hardware dropping a PIII would be a larger issue in Linux than in Windows. Windows boxes actively used still running on a PIII based system may be as rare as the platforms dropped by Linux. Things are a bit more comparable than you suggest.
The day we post that Windows 10 won't get updates on certain devices because support is suddenly yanked, conflicted minds all over Slashdot will be blown.
Expecting a machine that runs a specific version of Windows to still be running 20 years later is extremely foolish. If the company that sold you the machine doesn't have access to the source code for everything on that machine then you are playing with fire. Maybe you'll get lucky but only a fool depends on luck with big capital purchases.
We of course know that now. And this Microsoft issue is part of what illustrate it. And that is the problem. Did Microsoft tell them they were foolish? Probably not. Even without dishonesty, they'll be happy to make the sale. Remember all of the applications businesses were developing for their intranet that were developed for Internet Exploder 6? A lotta time, and a lotta money to update all of those apps. Foolish? Especially in the glare of 20/20 hindsight. I don't know what the present day situation is, but only a few years ago, there were significant numbers of companies still using IE 6. It is a lot harder to convince the suits that everything has to be re-written every 3 years when the old system still works.
So for that big capital equipment purchase that is expected to last 50 years being controlled by a computer with a software system that you are foolish if you expect it to last ten? Sounds like the actual solution is not a Microsoft product.
I can see it now..... walking into the bosses office for a meeting with him and the head accountant....
You: "We have to buy all new computers and rewrite the software to control our forges."
Boss: Oh my, was there some sort of mass failure - a power surge or something?"
You: "Oh no, nothing like that".
Boss: "Well what made them stop working?"
You: " Oh, they are working perfectly!"
Boss: "but you want us to replace everything and re-write software for perfectly functioning equipment?"
Head accountant: "No we won't. Meeting's over!"
Its a different world than what we're used to.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.