If you are still running Windows 7, its time to find some other way to manage drivers. A new official blog post reveals that on June 17, 2021, Microsoft discontinued the publication of drivers to Windows Update for Windows 7 SP1, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2. For customers with the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, it will be still possible to use the ability to deploy drivers to your managed devices using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS_ and other supported methods.
The change comes a year and a half after end of support for Windows 7, followed with the expiration of the SHA-1 Trusted Root Certificate Authority for Windows 7 SP1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 last month. The SHA-1 Trusted Root Certificate Authority expired on May 9, 2021.
Due to the discontinuation and expiration of SHA-1 certificates, partners utilizing the Microsoft Trusted Root Program could publish incompatible SHA-2 signed drivers to unpatched Windows client and Windows Server devices. This, in turn, had the potential to cause degraded functionality or to cause devices to longer boot. This occurs because unpatched systems will have code integrity failures when presented with a SHA-2 signed driver.
So, to avoid the situation when an unpatched Windows 7 receives an incompatible device driver which is signed with a SHA-2 certificate, consumer devices won't fetch drivers from Windows Update any longer.
This makes installing and running Windows 7 even harder than before. It is worth mentioning that support for Windows 7 SP1 ended on January 14, 2019.
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