Chap 'fixes' Microsoft's Windows 7 and 8 update block on new CPUs A developer using the handle “Zeffy” claims to have found a way around Microsoft's ban on updates for old versions of Windows on shiny new CPUs. Microsoft flagged its new policy early last year, telling world+dog that Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intel’s upcoming 7th Gen Intel Core (Kaby Lake) …
"Microsoft, doing everything they can to kill the PC market"
Don't worry ...
They know that there are many millions of fans that will, in spite of all that MS has always done to screw them over, relentessly insist (time and time again) on having a MS virus running inside their kit.
OEMs also have a heavy hand in the matter and there are no really viable/no fuss alternatives for these many millions of desktop users (which are certainly *not* part of the Reg readership).
So ...
What does MS possibly have to lose?
Cheers.
I see that my text has not been clear enough.
So I'll attempt another go:
The many millions of PC users out there are and will continue to be royally screwed unless "really viable/no fuss alternatives" are available to them.
Just in case: a really viable/no fuss alternative is an OS that can be presented to them with a familiar interface so that they do not have to take a course to do what they *already* know how to use (however little that may be).
Many years ago MS implanted the idea (which the general public accepted) that using a PC was *easy*, not something you had to learn about, so those are the (marked) cards you have to play with.
So unless you offer something that is familiar enough, the great unwashed will stick to what that *is* familiar enough to them: the MS virus inside the new kit they just purchased.
And yes, I'm writing this for *you* Linux devs out there, so worried about rolling out the next new wonder and getting your 10s of net fame for it.
There you go.
Maybe the key thing to having an OS that "people recognize" is having your new OS actually being recognizable as the same OS?
And making an OS "easy to use" might involve having, I dunno, a single place for settings, a single application style , obvious icons for performing tasks rather than expecting people to click and prod the edges of the desktop.
Linux window managers now bear much more resemblance to windows 7 than windows 10 does at this point.
But in any case, ChromeOS is apparently what is being given to kids in US schools now, so presumably that will be what the future spenders there are familiar with...unfortunately this means Google will also be familiar with them.
"Can you pop around and fix my computer, it's broke. Again!"
"It's a full-time job keeping that Windows machine of yours running. Oh alright, as long as you come and pick me up"
"Yeah, no problem, I'll be round yours in ten minutes"
......
"That was a quick ten minutes"
"Sorry I'm desperate to get the PC fixed as I have emails and stuff to deal with"
"Well, you have webmail, so why not do your urgent work on my pc and I'll finish my cup of tea. Do you want a cuppa?"
......
"There, done. Thanks for that."
"Well let's get around to your place then and I'll install Linux on your PC"
"Whoa! Linux? No way. After ten years I've barely mastered Windows, you're not going to have me start all over again, learning new tricks"
"You've been merrily working away on a Linux machine for the past half hour"
"What? This is Linux?"
"Yes, and just like all my other friends, you're going onto Linux. If for no other reason, I have a life beyond being on permanent call-out to your blessed Windows computer"
.........
Note to self. Stop installing Linux on friends computers, because you rarely hear from them after.
Hmm, OK, so it's been six months since I last kicked Linux's (Ubuntu) tyres, and yes it's now a perfectly capable, attractive, and easy to use OS ... but I'm a software developer/former Netware & BSD network admin with 25 years of experience. You will only have a quiet life installing Linux for your friends and family if all they want to do is surf the web, listen to music, watch YouTube and create the odd Libre Office document. They will be ringing your support line the second they try and plug in that dodgy eBay Chinese webcam/shinynewdevice. It is not ready for the mainstream.
And, sadly, I doubt that GNU/Linux ever will be ready for the mainstream (although it's been my personal choice for over ten years). The distinction between Linux-the-kernel and GNU/Linux-the-OS is becoming more important than ever when one remembers that the ?majority? platform is now Google/Linux, aka Android. Linux is a nice kernel which, at least in my experience, is significantly superior to the Windows kernel; unfortunately, outside of Android, userland is at best clunky and at worst downright hostile.
I'm willing to go through the pain of periodically having to reconfigure the bluetooth setup because of some breaking change in bluez/alsa/pulse/$PACKAGE and that of having to type some cryptic commands to get an A2DP connection in exchange for the computational efficiency, decent file systems and ability to build an environment that fits with my preferences, but that's the last thing that my (Mac-user) wife would want to have to contend with.
Just for a rant, I personally don't think that __any__ of the mainstream OS's actually get things right because the security contexts are defined in terms of users (UID in *nix, SID in Windows); that worked fine for non-networked machines with trusted code and ensures that the machine can't be hosed by a rogue process. Unfortunately, it doesn't take process isolation into account ("Facebook can access my photos, but Word can't") or the "soft" context (my holiday photos vs my "personal" collection) - even worse, a web browser is a single process from the OS perspective but can be doing almost anything across multiple different contexts. In my mind, we can't achieve real security until these types ideas (properly thought out) are baked-in to the kernel itself.
While a user & not in any sense a developer I have just switched to a new, (To me) Linux distro & I'd suggest that any current/potential Linux users give it a try, (Live DVD).
It's called Rosa & its Russian despite which it's damned good, has large repo's & a clean desktop. It's available in all the main desktop versions although the KDE one is particularly decent.
After the 750th return with a customer citing "No Linux drivers" they'll have one quickly coded.
When I was building custom drivers for digital medical imaging systems one vendor refused to provide interface specs to our company citing we were too small to be bothered with. When our client (a very large medical school) added support for our software as a non-negotiable requirement for the multi-million $ contract to replace aging imaging equipment the OEM would not stop phoning and emailing until I answered.
Money talks.
adding new badly supported hardware to linux machine.
Firstly the problem you are talking about is the hardware vendor only providing support for the "most popular" OS. Ignoring that there are lots of linux people willing to code drivers for decent hardware the premise that windows remains the "most popular" OS is being undermined by MS themseleves.
Lastly there are lots of other vendors who do support linux, if your mate has bought a bit of kit that only works on windows and ignores all the other machines out there then they are not going to last very long and neither will the limited support the vendor did offer. Better to get him to get a refund as he has been gyped
Having bought kit that was windows only but then had support dropped by the OS in the past, I can tell you that windows has a far worse support history than linux even when the vendor is a fly by night.
ChromeOS is a reincarnation of what we used to use back in the 1980s, under the name "computer terminal". Like the Xterms of the late 1980s, it is graphical, not 24x80 text only, but it is not a computing platform, just a front end to someone else's computer. So while it may be useful for classroom settings where the school wants to keep control,l it is no more a substitute for a desktop OS than is a Lyft app a substitute for a car.
As far as Windows-mimic distros, Zorin is one of the more well-known. I haven't run it for awhile. I have run Q4OS. It has a "Control Panel" (or "Settings", depending on which look you choose). It has "My Computer" and "My Documents". It has an application menu, just like pre-8 Windows, except that the applications are properly sorted into categories and not just tossed in any-which-way.
Have a squint at this screenshot and this one, for instance. Both Q4OS Linux, and both would be instantly familiar to a Windows user.
So some Linux devs have been working on Windows-look, easy-to-use distros. And have been for years.
That said, we're back to Windows-only applications -- Office, Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc -- and games, and the dearth of machines offered off-the-shelf with Zorin or Q4OS or similar.
And all that said, I'm mostly in agreement with your points. For the user that needs to go under the hood a bit, it's still Linux. You're not going to find a registry or a bunch of dll files, and your knowledge about SysWOW64 and System32 folders is not going to be of much help. You'll have to learn other stuff instead.
Yes, that may be very nice for the 'normal office workers' but what about those who want to get their browser settings going??
eg showing date created/ modified, and little tweaks to IE, needed for proprietary web software to work (yes, upper management are still too paranoid to leave MS.. :( )
In my case, the Windows 10 shenannigans, the multiple changes in direction for Windows Phone/Windows Mobile that have resulted in total destruction of market share and app support, and the "you will rent this software" approach have actually lost my business and I'm switching our entire business to macOS and the Apple ecosystem for everything else too. Thus far, life is considerably better.
"They know that there are many millions of fans that will, in spite of all that MS has always done to screw them over, relentessly insist (time and time again) on having a MS virus running inside their kit."
When an alternative OS can run Adobe CS / CC, plus all the legacy specialized industry apps without overhead or adding VM management layers, get back to me.
We run Windows because we must. Get over it and get it though the gray matter. Businesses run Windows because Windows runs the apps that businesses need to get business done. From Windows-only hardware support to millions of terrabytes of data in Windows-only application files, we are stuck with Windows for the foreseeable future.
And there it is, right there.
If Adobe would port CS/CC to Linux (not a far stretch from the code-base for the Mac) myself and others here will be ass-deep in folk *demanding* we install Linux on their desktops. My better half (Designer) would set her desktop on bloody *fire* (tendency to blame hardwre for softwre problems), place her hands on hips, and say "Well? Where's my new Linux box?" to which I'd respond by grabbing my coat and heading to Fry's (for new hardware, I already have half a dozen distros on my key-ring).
*I* think InkScape is (very seriously subjectively) better than Illustrator HOWEVER, GIMP is...er...GIMP and Photoshop...isn't. Photoshop folk are not going to leave Adobe (I learned this at WiReD in the 90s) and until that little gap gets bridged, folk who could and would use the hell out of Linux (or BSD) won't because their Primary Work Tool simply isn't available.
From a Professional/SoHo standpoint, there is very little else that Linux can't accomplish (better) than Windows (in every respect) but the lack of Creative Suite is a crushing liability...more than it seems it should be. But...there it is.
An OS, no matter the quality, will always be hamstrung but the availability, or lack, of Applications users need (I'm not putting *want* here).
[The Gimp...because, GIMP]
Don't personally use CS (my brother does, and I recognise all you say) but I do use Xara(*), which is Windows-only. My main machine at work is dual-boot Windows 7 / OpenSuse and I use OpenSuse for almost everything else.
I've tried Inkscape (use it at home where there's no Windows at all) and it doesn't quite do it for me, though it's not bad.
My theory as to why this type of software isn't available on Linux is very simple - Linux users aren't used to paying hundreds of pounds for software. Port Xara to Linux and the developers think people would expect it to be free, or at best a few tens of pounds. So they don't.
M.
(*)full disclosure - I came via Acorn's Draw, and Xara's shared heritage really helped the transition.l
Now all you need is to get Intel and AMD to write drivers for Windows 7 for the new chips and chipsets...
I thought that was a major stumbling block, that Intel, at least, weren't providing Windows 7 and 8 drivers for newer hardware.
That means, Windows might work, but you won't be able to access all of the features of the hardware.
Which is acceptable, and very different from "you won't receive any fix, even if it is still compiled to work on older CPUs, just because we need to force you to use Windows 10, so we can also resell your data".
Most of the time "drivers" for chips and chipsets are just a few .inf files describing them and optimizing some settings - as you can see the OS boots and installs even before you install them.
1/ Microsoft enforce arbitrary restrictions on existing products to try and force new OS upgrades
2/ you can modify a DLL using a hex editor and the underlying OS doesn't mind executing that code... No wonder windows is such a huge steaming pile of malware serving zombie botnets.
2/ you can modify a DLL using a hex editor and the underlying OS doesn't mind executing that code... No wonder windows is such a huge steaming pile of malware serving zombie botnets.
Careful with that. I had to do just this with some binary blobs on a smart 'phone to get the "new" shiny Android GPS subsystem in Nougat to work (function name changes where the old function names got re-used, the bastards). That didn't notice a few bits flipped either.
The point is not that Windows doesn't suck; it clearly does. The point is that all software sucks.
"One question that arises frequently on alt.sysadmin.recovery is "Is there any operating system that doesn't suck?""
"They all suck. Except AIX, which sucks raw eggs through a very thin straw."
https://web.archive.org/web/20160329090859/http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/operating-systems/os-suck
What does the proliferation of botnets have to do with Windows not enforcing signatures on all system files? Malware doesn't have to be in the form of a system .dll to create a botnet or do encrypt your personal files. If the user has root level access, he's able to install programs that do root level things (malicious or otherwise), and signature enforcement won't stop that. The purpose of the OS, after all, is to run the programs the user wants to run, and if the user wants to run programs that end up doing harm, it's the job of the OS to make it happen. I don't like being told "no" by my PC... I own it, and if I tell it to do something, I want it to do it, not tell me "access denied" or what not.
The only way to realistically combat that kind of threat would be to lock the system down, iOS style, so that user programs have so few privileges that they are unable to do anything at a low level. It's pretty hard to get an iPad really screwed up, as I understand... but you have to cede a great deal of control to Apple (on a device for which you paid dearly) in order to get that level of protection, and you're sure to be frustrated by Apple's limitations before long.
"No wonder windows is such a huge steaming pile of malware serving zombie botnets."
That are mostly controlled by REMOTELY compromised Linux boxes....
Windows will refuse to boot if you change OS kernel related files. It has better chain of trust model capabilities (Secure Boot) that most other OSs - say off the shelf Linux for instance.
Says a lot when an OS is so unpopular you have to trick or force people to use it, along with breaking the alternatives.
There is also the assumption that windows update will actually work. I have one windows 7 pc that stopped updating properly months ago, and a windows 10 install that just refuses to run the creators update.
Good job I use Linux for 99% of the time....
Had the same issue here (gaming, hers and my mother, the three die hards I can not migrate) and it might be related to the silverlight update from december.
Disable automatic updates and stop the wuaserv service (the one running under svchost control and staying up at an entire core), then rescan for updates manually. Should show up with three to four important patches, ~300Mb.
Afterwards reboot and reenable automatic updates.
hth
"Disable automatic updates and stop the wuaserv service (the one running under svchost control and staying up at an entire core), then rescan for updates manually. Should show up with three to four important patches, ~300Mb."
An easier method to resolve most of these type of issues is to run the Windows Update Troubleshooter at https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/10164/fix-windows-update-errors
I had 2 PC's both running W7 that stopped getting any updates at all after I had to resort to blocking attempts to upgrade them without permission to W10.
It took weeks of reading up on things and trying dozens of fixes before I finally got it working again... Worth noting that I got zero decent advice from MS and had to resort to the online treasure trove of sites that offer advice to people in these kinds of situations.
What worked on one system, didn't work on the other though.
I was going to upgrade my gaming rig to a Ryzen based system later this year... then I thought that I might be better of upgrading the 6 core FX cpu to the 8 core one instead and upgrading the GPU instead after reading about this (I heard about it last year and thought it was so stupid that it'd never actually happen).. So to hear just 2 days later that some clever dev has already found a way around it... the upgrade may be back on the cards once price drop to more sensible levels. I'm sticking with W7 until EOL in 2020 partly because I despise the way MS have pushed W10 and partly because my media server is used with Media Centre and there is no alternative that works with the Remote controls I have. Even after W7 is no longer supported I may continue to usebehind a firewall and continue to use it as my mediaserver, or perhaps convert it to FreeNAS.
Re new Windows 7 SP1 installation:
1 Install W7 without any internet connection enabled
2 Set the Windows Update option to 'Never download automatically'
3 Install the following updates manually, in this order (download them on another PC)
• KB3020369
• KB3177467
• KB3172605
• KB3207752
4 Connect to the internet
5 Search for updates - shouldn't take more than 10 minutes
6 Give thanks to http://wu.krelay.de/en/ from whom this advice springs
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