The IT Nerd

It seems that Microsoft is back to their old tricks of doing anything possible to get people to use Windows 10. Even if it means infuriating their user base. A case in point are people who have the new cool processors on the block which are the AMD Ryzen, Qualcomm 8996, and Intel Kaby Lake series. For those users, Windows 7 and 8.1 is not an option. This came to light on this past Patch Tuesday when KB4012982 got pushed out to the wild and users of those processors noticed this:

Unsupported Hardware
Your PC uses a processor that isn’t supported on this version of Windows and you won’t receive updates.

Windows could not search for new updates
An error occurred while checking for new updates for your computer.
Error(s) found:
Code 80240037 Windows Update encountered an unknown error.

Their official resolution to this is to update to Windows 10. Or live with an unpatachable system that is open to getting pwned by anything and everyone.

#EpicFail

Here’s why I have a problem with this. No support to me means this:

“You are running on unsupported hardware. Do you want to continue anyway? y/n”

In other words, it may work. But if things go sideways, it’s on you. Thus you choose to run this configuration, don’t call us if you need help because you were warned that it might not work. That I would be fine with and so would most people. What Microsoft is doing is this:

“Your hardware is unsupported. Upgrade to Windows 10 OR ELSE”

I call that a cynical attempt to force users to Windows 10. If you take into account that there is no technical reason why Microsoft could not support these processors on Windows 7 or 8.1, that theory makes even more sense. The fact is that they only are interested in shoving Windows 10 down your throat. Though to be fair to Microsoft, they have said for a while now that they were going to do this.

Users are already finding ways around this though. The two most popular methods that are being floated about are to get updates via WSUS Offline or Autopatcher. Now these methods will work until Microsoft starts making their installers check to see what processor they’re running on, and then you’re back to having to potentially run an OS that you may not want to run.

Clearly Microsoft has jumped the shark.

This entry was posted on March 17, 2017 at 9:22 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.