Microsoft Confirms That Windows 10 Will Cut Off Devices with Older CPUs

Megalith

Megalith

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This is mostly a follow-up to that story about the Creators Update not working on Clover Trail systems: Microsoft has confirmed that any hardware device that falls out of the manufacturer’s support cycle may be ineligible for future Windows 10 updates. Some are worried that this could be a fundamental shift in policy; any device (e.g., processor, network controller, sound card) that a manufacturer discontinues or fails to actively support could conceivably drop out of Windows updates.

...Microsoft’s language opens up the possibility that any unsupported hardware device could be excluded from future Windows 10 updates. “Recognizing that a combination of hardware, driver and firmware support is required to have a good Windows 10 experience, we updated our support lifecycle policy to align with the hardware support period for a given device,” Microsoft said in a statement. “If a hardware partner stops supporting a given device or one of its key components and stops providing driver updates, firmware updates, or fixes, it may mean that device will not be able to properly run a future Windows 10 feature update.”
 
Clearly the logic of this whatever the truth might be which could be totally different than what's pointed out in the article is that Microsoft doesn't want Windows 7 hanging around forever on peoples machines again. They want continued profit from people forced into new products each cycle. This is the same logic behind phone manufactures taking out removable batteries and microsd card support
 
So much for the claim that Windows 10 will keep everybody on the same playing field via the whole forced updating fiasco. Wonder what excuse they'll come up with now as to why we need that crap forced down our throats.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Clearly the logic of this whatever the truth might be which could be totally different than what's pointed out in the article is that Microsoft doesn't want Windows 7 hanging around forever on peoples machines again. They want continued profit from people forced into new products each cycle. This is the same logic behind phone manufactures taking out removable batteries and microsd card support
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What?
If a 4 year old system won't support Windows 10 any more, then people will just go back to Windows 7.
This is the opposite of trying to get everyone on Windows 10.

This will cause a fragmentation Windows 10 versions, making support even worse.
I have people using 10 year old laptops with Windows 10, and they are happy with them.
I also have several 7 year old laptops under my desk at the office. These where high-end laptop when new, and are still faster than most the mid to low end laptops currently being sold. Since they are not "officially" supported any more, does that mean no windows 10 updates?

What about the systems I built on my own? Are they going to drop support because the motherboard is no longer supported?
Is this also going to apply to Server 2016? If they try it on Servers, they will really get a lot of push back.

Sounds more like the Apple model. Forced obsolescence.
 
This is why all these motherboard manufacturers and chipset makers fell in line with Microsoft's Windows 10 Only policy for Skylake (partially), Kaby Lake, and Ryzen so easily. In exchange they knew they were getting planned obsolescence.
 
This is bad in that some manufacturers use sound chips that are supported by the manufacturer for all of a month after release. (HP and their consumer brands!) I've had too many times of trying to load up a OS upgrade on a family member's PC, only to find half the drivers aren't updated for the new OS.
 
So much for people bragging "Windows 10 can run on 8 year old hardware just fine!" or "This setup has been good to me for 6+ years! All I upgraded was the video card!".

It starts with this. It'll happen to more and more hardware, too.

I'm a huge Windows 10 fan. I love it. I'll run it on everything if I can. But, if they start cutting off my hardware, I won't upgrade it so I can upgrade Windows. I'll put a different OS on there that does the job. No need to upgrade hardware or buy a new OS. I'm not throwing away perfectly good hardware, and I can bet that Linux will keep releasing updates to that old hardware for a bit longer. At that point, I'd be pretty upset that any loyalty I had towards Windows wouldn't matter.

It sucks, too, because I have one of those Clovertrail devices. What about homebuilt systems? When the CPU gets to a certain age or generation gap? Lenovo and Dell usually drop support fairly quickly, too...
 
This is how they combat slumping PC sales. Your PC works fine after 4 years? NOPE! It's "vulnerable" since MS won't let you patch your OS if using "obsolete" hardware! "Oh, sorry, your hardware isn't supported anymore. Care to buy a NEW PC?" This is BULLSHIT and I hope it bites them in the ass!
 
Apple has already done this. I have a Macbook from 2008 that I used for iOS development work (mainly). OSX stopped supporting it a few releases back. To some extent, I get it. My Core2Duo system is older and doesn't support the new radios and other technologies used by Apple. It would be extra work for their QA team (and development team) to support older hardware.
However, it still runs ok. Xcode still compiles code relatively quick. I basically use it for system to run Chrome and ssh to my Linux servers now.

My main rig is a 2600k running Windows 10. Wonder how much life is left in it? Hell, it runs fine for everything I'm using it for. I know I will get a new system at some point - but do not not being forced to. I know, nothing to worry about right now as it is still supported...
 
I ran into this with Core 2 Duo Elitebook / Probooks in April, the accelerometer driver that worked in the Fall update, was blocked in Creators.

So looks like every 6-8 months, need to retest those older machines.
 
Master_shake_ said:
Why is Windows 10 so terrible?

This is getting out of hand.
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It's not so terrible. Until you have an older laptop that runs out of manufacturers support (happens all the time), so Windows decides it's not going to update anymore (possible, not a definite). Even if you've had an older laptop, upgraded RAM, SSD... And it runs great, fast. They could decide to stop support and you'll be stuck with an older, insecure version of Windows 10. So, Windows 10 could be terrible...
 
Counting down till Windows only runs on surface products lol, they think they can copy Apple.
 
Too bad the gaming industry as a whole hasn't gotten behind Linux. If they did then Windows would become irrelevant to most gamers.
 
5150Joker said:
Too bad the gaming industry as a whole hasn't gotten behind Linux. If they did then Windows would become irrelevant to most gamers.
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The thing is that these Clover Trail Atoms are pretty much as useless for PC gaming as there is. Just getting the Steam client to run on these devices is problematic. And don't expect awesome things from Linux with this platform.
 
5150Joker said:
Too bad the gaming industry as a whole hasn't gotten behind Linux. If they did then Windows would become irrelevant to most gamers.
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The problem with Linux gaming though is its never worked as well for AAA gaming as Windows can. It's a nice dream but Linux, unlike windows needs volunteers to work on it so progress is way too slow. Its not Windows 10 though which is a huge thing its got going for it.
 
I'm not sure why you'd worry about dropped support for older hardware. That's been happening for years. If you have an old scanner, you're probably going to have to get a new one or use VueScan and that's been the case going back to XP (or perhaps earlier).
That said, if they start dropping support for older hardware that's going to be a problem...especially if 7 or 8 supports it still, because it's ridiculous to sit there and beg customers to upgrade to 10 and then drop support for the hardware before their old OS did. I can understand why they'd want to do this. It's obvious that people are upgrading computers much more slowly than they use to. You could still run a desktop system on a 10 year old core 2 e6300 (the bottom of the core2 line at that time). You won't play games on it, but you could definitely edit documents, browse the web and what not, but at a minimum, I think that h/w should be supported until 7 support ends (and probably 8). After that, they need to say how long support for each CPU is going to last, because that may affect what CPU you buy.
 
Only experience I have with W10 is helping my parents figure out how do to simple things like reboot or shutdown their new PC(I had to search how to even shut it down). My 5 year old laptop still works just fine on W7 and I'm glad I didn't update now as it would probably be blacklisted soon if this is true. I guess my old AthlonXP system will just keep chugging along on WXP doing distributed science computing until it finally dies, I doubt it would even be able to be updated now. My other two old computers got switched to Linux when their HDs died, so will this one when it goes.
 
ZodaEX said:
The problem with Linux gaming though is its never worked as well for AAA gaming as Windows can. It's a nice dream but Linux, unlike windows needs volunteers to work on it so progress is way too slow. Its not Windows 10 though which is a huge thing its got going for it.
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AFAIK, the idea that some guy is working on Linux in his garage is mostly fiction. The most of the work is done by companies like IBM, Intel and Red Hat. The thing is the top developers have no interest in gaming. IBM isn't going to get consulting fees from Merk if they make Linux gaming better.
It's all up to the likes of AMD, NVIDIA and the game publishers and I suspect most are fine with Windows.

That said, I suppose it's possible that the gaming work is all being done by unpaid volunteers, but I doubt it.
 
nilepez said:
AFAIK, the idea that some guy is working on Linux in his garage is mostly fiction. The most of the work is done by companies like IBM, Intel and Red Hat. The thing is the top developers have no interest in gaming. IBM isn't going to get consulting fees from Merk if they make Linux gaming better.
It's all up to the likes of AMD, NVIDIA and the game publishers and I suspect most are fine with Windows.

That said, I suppose it's possible that the gaming work is all being done by unpaid volunteers, but I doubt it.
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If AMD, NVIDIA and Intel along with some top game devs were to ever get behind Linux, it wouldn't be long until MS was in trouble. The hardware guys are so afraid someone will get to see their code for drivers if they work in the open source space where Linux operates, but it is silly since all of their competitors could just as easily decompile and reverse engineer those drivers anyhow, it would just be legal with open source. It isn't as if AMD drivers would work with NVIDIA hardware anyhow.

Most computer programming used to be open source or close to it until MS and Apple, ect decided they could make more money by copyrighting it. Xerox invented most of what made Windows and Apple OS great but they didn't lock it away and stifle advancement of computers.
 
This is why I've been preparing for Linux support for over a decade. So when the masses come to me and say, "I want Linux", I'll be ready.
 
My computer is far from bleeding edge but it runs Windows 10 just fine. Yes, my Xeon is from '11, but it's plenty fast enough and doesn't cause any problems, like attracting malware. If Microdick does that shit to me, well, off to Linux I shall go.

It seems as though MS is really trying hard to piss off and alienate consumers.

And I actually paid for Win 10.
 
Apparently, the actual problem is that Imagination Technologies is refusing to update the drivers for the integrated graphics on the GPUs. The good news is that this is the last Intel CPU with an Imagination Technologies GPU so this isn't likely to happen again any time soon.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...ems-wont-get-windows-10-creators-update-ever/

Microsoft doesn't control their entire infrastructure.
 
I'm not to worried about them stopping support for my old hardware. I started dual booting my systems once Windows 10 came out. I'd kind of been preparing for a number of years now, mostly running applications that were available on Windows and on Linux (Octave, jEdit, Firefox, Thunderbird, Eclipse, Libre Office, gcc/g++, etc) . I now do all my major computing under Linux and only use Windows 10 for games. I do have one Windows 8.1 based computer setup as a Photoshop CS6 workstation.
 
oROEchimaru said:
That is fing scary when HP, DELL etc stop supporting most products in 2-3 years.
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AND when most 3rd party motherboard mfgs stop supporting their products at around 1 year.

If this actually happens, then I will be moving to Linux. MS can DIAF if they continue to pull this crap.
 
jedijeb13 said:
Only experience I have with W10 is helping my parents figure out how do to simple things like reboot or shutdown their new PC(I had to search how to even shut it down). My 5 year old laptop still works just fine on W7 and I'm glad I didn't update now as it would probably be blacklisted soon if this is true. I guess my old AthlonXP system will just keep chugging along on WXP doing distributed science computing until it finally dies, I doubt it would even be able to be updated now. My other two old computers got switched to Linux when their HDs died, so will this one when it goes.
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Start -> Power -> Shut Down

was too hard to find? UMMMMMMM......
 
skiddierow said:
When Sandy Bridge gets blocked, it's gonna be a shit show.
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except, there isn't anything about a sandybridge that is hard to support unlike the tablet grade atom that is the clovertrial.

people are blaming Microsoft when this is a imagination / Intel issue and it isn't with separate processors getting blocked cause they are "old" , it is that Intel and imagination aren't making graphics drivers that work with windows 10 for these atom processors.

these chips barely ran windows 8 adn if they were in systems that had pci-e slots ( they don't , they are tablet grade atom chips) a user would drop in a cheap nvidia or amd card and upgrade just fine.

I understand that people think their old computers should be able to work and get updates for a few years but holding this SoC tablet chip up as the example is kinda silly.

I take it more as an example like how android versions don't get support on old hardware and it reminds me why I build my own computers to mitigate these issues and why I don't like cheap tablets / netbooks like those eMMC based ones, at the end of the day they aren't worth it.
 
undermined said:
except, there isn't anything about a sandybridge that is hard to support unlike the tablet grade atom that is the clovertrial.

people are blaming Microsoft when this is a imagination / Intel issue and it isn't with separate processors getting blocked cause they are "old" , it is that Intel and imagination aren't making graphics drivers that work with windows 10 for these atom processors.

these chips barely ran windows 8 adn if they were in systems that had pci-e slots ( they don't , they are tablet grade atom chips) a user would drop in a cheap nvidia or amd card and upgrade just fine.

I understand that people think their old computers should be able to work and get updates for a few years but holding this SoC tablet chip up as the example is kinda silly.

I take it more as an example like how android versions don't get support on old hardware and it reminds me why I build my own computers to mitigate these issues and why I don't like cheap tablets / netbooks like those eMMC based ones, at the end of the day they aren't worth it.
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Older computers do work great with Windows 10. I just upgraded a system with an SSD that had 8GB of Ram, Intel Q8200 and Windows 10 CU already installed and it worked really fast with that SSD. That said, these Atom based tablets are slower than that Q8200 and Intel is not very good at releasing video drivers for their own older video chipsets on laptops..
 
ManofGod said:
Older computers do work great with Windows 10. I just upgraded a system with an SSD that had 8GB of Ram, Intel Q8200 and Windows 10 CU already installed and it worked really fast with that SSD. That said, these Atom based tablets are slower than that Q8200 and Intel is not very good at releasing video drivers for their own older video chipsets on laptops..
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yeah, that was my point, a chip like my very own 2600K will probably be supported past 10 years but these tablet SoC type atom chips are were Microsoft draws the line if no one is making drivers to them . It isn't worth MIcrosoft to try and reverse engineer the graphics drivers to add support and they have to rely on Imagination giving up the code.
 
undermined said:
It isn't worth MIcrosoft to try and reverse engineer the graphics drivers to add support and they have to rely on Imagination giving up the code.
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Reverse-engineering drivers legally is insanely expensive and it's not really Microsoft's job to do that. They didn't sell that SoC, Intel did.
 
Ur_Mom said:
So much for people bragging "Windows 10 can run on 8 year old hardware just fine!" or "This setup has been good to me for 6+ years! All I upgraded was the video card!".

It starts with this. It'll happen to more and more hardware, too.

I'm a huge Windows 10 fan. I love it. I'll run it on everything if I can. But, if they start cutting off my hardware, I won't upgrade it so I can upgrade Windows. I'll put a different OS on there that does the job. No need to upgrade hardware or buy a new OS. I'm not throwing away perfectly good hardware, and I can bet that Linux will keep releasing updates to that old hardware for a bit longer. At that point, I'd be pretty upset that any loyalty I had towards Windows wouldn't matter.

It sucks, too, because I have one of those Clovertrail devices. What about homebuilt systems? When the CPU gets to a certain age or generation gap? Lenovo and Dell usually drop support fairly quickly, too...
Click to expand...
I may be one of the first victims of this. I have several Core2 Quad systems on intel socket 775 motherboards. The new Insider preview refuses to install on one of them. It is an older system, but it does everything I want it to do. I guess it's back to Win 7 or 8.1 for me. So what was that they were saying about Win 10 being the last version of Windows? What a load of ....
 
I haven't updated my Windows 7 since I installed it years ago, except when a new program actually needs it for some reason i.e. dot net update or whatever. Everything works the way I want it to. Every program and game I have runs perfectly. I have never had automatic updates turned on ever. No problems with hardware compatibility either.

The way I see it things are moving more and more toward a browser based environment and if MS keeps up this BS, Windows will be something nobody really wants or needs anymore except for certain specialized programs.
 
sirgallium said:
The way I see it things are moving more and more toward a browser based environment and if MS keeps up this BS, Windows will be something nobody really wants or needs anymore except for certain specialized programs.
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Windows 7 doesn't work on these particular Atom devices AFAIK, not officially. They were developed by Intel to support Windows 8 tablets until they got Bay Trail done.
 
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