If you recently bought a new PC or assembled one yourself with a new CPU and decided to install Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 on it, you will not be able to update these operating systems. Microsoft is not going to deliver updates for you any more. This was recently announced. A newly released set of patches brings the CPU detection feature to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
Microsoft today released KB4012218 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. It comes with the following change log.
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- Enabled detection of processor generation and hardware support when PC tries to scan or download updates through Windows Update.
- Simplified listing of Approved Servers in the Point and Print group policies by allowing wildcards in the server name.
- Addressed issue that produces corrupt output when using fread() to read data from a pipe. The runtime will sometimes drop the newlines between lines.
- Addressed issue to update time zone information.
- Addressed issue with the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service process that crashes on the domain controller when making certain Lightweight Directory Access Protocol requests.
Notice the line Enabled detection of processor generation and hardware support when PC tries to scan or download updates through Windows Update.
The same is true for KB4012219, which is released for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 / 2012 R2. The change log for this update is as follows:
- Enabled a warning message in Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) to alert administrators of a design change that may prevent the processing of a User Group after installing security update MS16-072.
- Addressed issue that prevents a smart card module from pairing with a contactless smart card reader.
- Addressed issue where a Scale-Out File Server that uses dual parity disks loses access to a disk if a disk fails while the parity log is being written.
- Addressed issue with the Spaceport driver that causes disks to detach after a hard restart.
- Addressed issue in multipath I/O when Driver Verifier is enabled.
- Addressed issue that causes workload disruption in Azure StorSimple appliances after installing KB3169982. Installation occurs using the KB3172614 rollup (released 2016.07).
- Addressed issue that causes crashes in a customer’s data path management software because of a regression in multipath I/O after installing KB3185279, KB3185331, or KB3192404.
- Addressed issue where installation of KB3121261 on a third-party, thinly provisioned Storage Area Network causes multipath I/O Event ID 48. This is in response to Small Computer System Interface status - 0X28 - SCSISTAT_QUEUE_FULL (SRB Status - 0X4 - SRB_STATUS_ERROR).
- Addressed issue to provide PowerShell cmdlets that enable and gather diagnostics for storage spaces.
- Addressed issue with multipath I/O failure that can lead to data corruption or application failures.
- Addressed issue that causes File Explorer to hang when performing a search on a network drive while connected using the Remote Desktop Protocol.
- Addressed issue that causes a crash when the user tries to connect to the server using WinShare and Remote Desktop Services. Stop error 0x50 at win32k!pDCIAdjClr+0x4f.
- Enabled detection of processor generation and hardware support when PC tries to scan or download updates through Windows Update.
- Improved support for networks by adding new entries to the Access Point Name (APN) database.
- Simplified listing of Approved Servers in the Point and Print group policies by allowing wildcards in the server name.
- Addressed issue to update Windows Defender on Windows 8.1.
- Addressed issue that prevents clients from accessing a file server when using Server Message Block 1.0 and NT LAN Manager authentication after installing MS16-110/KB3187754.
- Addressed issue that produces corrupted output when you use the fread() function to read data from a pipe.
- Addressed issue to set and persist the Quality of Service settings on a per-host basis.
- Addressed issue that breaks high-availability and fail over of a clustered virtual machine (VM). This occurs when the default data store settings for the VMs are configured inconsistently across the nodes in the cluster. For example, some data store settings are in %ProgramData%, while others use shared storage.
- Addressed issue where, under high load, the background tasks threads are blocked. None of the clusters that use Virtual Hard Disk Sharing can access their disks. This results in unresponsive virtual machines.
- Addressed issue (error 0x800b) that causes System Center Virtual Machine Manager to fail after live migrating a virtual machine between two Hyper-V clusters.
- Addressed issue where false file conflicts occur when Windows Server Work Folders is reinstalled after installing Azure Hybrid File Services.
- Addressed issue where share contents go offline if remote clients connect over slow links when encryption is enabled and offline caching is disabled for a server share.
- Addressed issue to generate Remote Desktop Services self-signed certificates to use SHA-2 instead of SHA-1. After this update, any existing self-signed certs in RD Session Host should be updated with SHA-2 certs. However, existing self-signed certs (if any) in Connection Broker and Gateway should be regenerated using the Remote Desktop Management Services (RDMS) UI.
- Addressed issue to allow a user to set the password for a virtual account.
- Addressed issue where IIS Automatic Certificate Rebind feature breaks client certificate mapping with active directory by disabling DS Mapper upon renewal of the server certificate. As a result, no user will be able to access the site unless an administrator manually remakes the binding and enables the DS Mapper.
- Addressed issue where Active Directory returns incorrect active thread count numbers for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol requests. Incorrect thread counts prevent Office 365 from load balancing correctly.
- Addressed issue to update time zone information.
- Addressed issue with random crashes on Hyper-V servers when users access Virtual Hard Disk files on Cluster Shared Volumes.
- Addressed issue that causes file share witnesses stored on a Scale-Out File Server cluster 2012R2 to fail. Event ID for this Error is 1562 and you will get an Error 64 in the Cluster Log for the failed Healthcheck (from RFC 7205769).
- Addressed issue where, after installing security update MS16-123, administrators cannot access some network drives that are mapped using the Distributed File System Namespace. This lack of accessibility occurs even though User Account Control and EnableLinkedConnections are enabled.
- Addressed issue where virtual Network File System (NFS) server shares intermittently fail to mount when another NFS share is assigned the same ID in a clustered environment.
- Addressed issue to add the LiveDump capture feature that will trigger a live kernel dump if requests are stuck for an extended period.
- Addressed issue where Failover Cluster Manager crashes when connecting to a cluster with a long name (15+ characters). This occurs after .NET 4.6.1 is installed.
- Addressed issue that crashes Exchange servers whenever a customer installs an Exchange cumulative or security update. Error code: STOP 0x3B
- Addressed issue that prevents the capture of network traffic when Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics starts and stops the session that monitors traffic in promiscuous mode.
- Addressed issue where users cannot connect to wireless, proxy, and VPN authentication. The Online Certificate Status Protocol responder service intermittently returns an IIS 500 error when processing client requests. This causes the clients to fail revocation checking and fail authentication to the required service.
- Addressed issue to provide a maintenance mode for Active Directory domain controllers.
- Addressed issue where Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) fails to authenticate external users because the ADFS proxy servers time out.
Both updates will prevent your operating system from downloading and installing updates if you have one of the following CPUs:
- Intel seventh (7th)-generation processors (Kaby Lake) or later
- AMD "Bristol Ridge" (Seventh generation) or newer
- Qualcomm "8996"
If your PC has any of these CPUs and you have Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 installed, Windows Update will not work. This is regardless of the fact that drivers may be available for your combination of hardware.
The Windows Update service will report the following:
Unsupported Hardware
Your PC uses a processor that isn’t supported on this version of Windows and you won’t receive updates.
It will appear when you scan or download updates using the Windows Update service.
The Windows Update window will keep showing the following message:
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.
Microsoft explains this as follows:
Windows 10 is the only Windows version that is supported on the following processor generations ...
Because of how this support policy is implemented, Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 devices that have a seventh generation or a later generation processor may no longer be able to scan or download updates through Windows Update or Microsoft Update.
This is quite a disappointing move from Microsoft. Plenty of hardware vendors still support Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 and provide drivers for all modern hardware for them.
I wasn't able to verify if Windows Update continues to work on the above mentioned CPUs if these patches are not installed. But there is no doubt that Microsoft will block the ability, if not now, then with a new patch. It might even be mandatory at some point or bundled along with a security update. If you prefer Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 over Windows 10 and have a new CPU, then you are out of luck from now.
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This Update is optional trought the windows update you cant skip this update it’s not critical
Big business was supposed to provide us with so many marvelous CHOICES!
How do we spell MONOPOLY?
MS says updates will not be available from Windows Update, but since MS offers direct downloads for each update, I wonder if you can just update that way. If people build their own computers I’m sure they know enough on how to manually update, and not rely on WU.
Well said
Manual updates will not install. I already tried it on windows 7 SP 1.
How difficult would it be for some clever person to get around this?
Anyway, I’m sure users could still manually install updates.
Or even compile slipstreamed ISOs at intervals.
Here’s a thought, does Windows Update work for virtual machines?
Most of VMs forward the real CPU values to the guest operating system. I think WU won’t work.
It is quite a disappointing move, as you say, but not a surprising one. The new Microsoft has no interest in customer satisfaction or their reputation any more. They do what they want and everyone can put up with it or complain in a forum. They are clearly not concerned about any mass exodus to Linux. I’m not betting that their belief in having a captive user base is completely wrong but I am hoping a few will walk away as I’m trying to do, and maybe one day the management will have reason to regret their arrogance.
With Linux (i use Mint 17) you get a free o/s that will do anything Windows can do and you control it. If you like it you may want to send Clem a donation (not compulsory). And if you need help there is a good friendly site to get assistance.
yep you are right. Linux Mint (I also use Mint 17 XFCE on my laptop) is really great OS.
Your PC is better off without Windows Updates anyway. Like most are saying if you feel you need an update to fix a problem, the manual update will suffice.
If Microsoft don’t want to play this computer will join my other one and run linux
I do not have KB4012218 and KB4012219, but still getting this message.