Microsoft Quietly Cuts Off Windows 7 Support for Older Intel Computers

Hagrid said:
I would pay for a windows 7 successor. They had a hell of a time just giving 10 away.
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It’s Microsoft, they could hand out free water on a hot day and people would be skeptical of it and there would be at least a dozen Redit threads of conspiracy theories from nanobots to LSD.
 
Lakados said:
It’s Microsoft, they could hand out free water on a hot day and people would be skeptical of it and there would be at least a dozen Redit threads of conspiracy theories from nanobots to LSD.
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Because free sometimes comes with a price. And I present win 10. Free, but comes with a crap load of ..... crap.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
Windows 7 was hardly "long in the tooth." There was nothing that I needed that Windows 10 can do that Windows 7 cannot. I tried fruitlessly to get Windows 7 working on a new laptop, but ASUS apparently made some deal with the devil (MS) to only release Windows 10 touchpad drivers - they went as far to eliminate previously available Windows 8 drivers that might have worked with 7.

I'll ride Windows 7 on my current Ryzen desktop computer for as long as driver support will allow me.
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Microsoft promised ten years of support when they released Windows 7 back in October, 2009. That's five years of mainstream support and five years of extended support. To put this in context....
  • Do you know what also got released in October, 2009? Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), and support ended for that version of Linux in April 2011, although you could upgrade the Linux to a later version.
  • Guess what also got released in August, 2009? That would be Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It is currently unsupported as of February 25, 2014.
  • Web browsers? Firefox 3.5 was released in June, 2009. Google Chrome 3 was released in October, 2009.
  • Should I throw in World of Warcraft? Patch 3.2.2 was released in September, 2009. Aren't we up to patch 7.2.5 by now?
  • Don't even say anything about the iOS or Android mobile operating systems.
But, please, tell us, once again, why Windows 7 isn't "long in the tooth".
 
heatlesssun said:
I've been using Windows for around 30 years now. Windows 7 might be the apotheosis of Windows. It was essentially a "pure" desktop OS that evolved over 20 years before the rise of mobile, cloud and AI. We're simply in a different time. A "true" successor to Windows 7 appeals to some folks in places like this but is it really anything that would fly off shelves these days? Probably not. There's a lot of resistance to wildly popular technologies in places like this. And there are legitimate reasons for some of the criticisms but nonetheless, still fucking wildly popular. How the hell in 2018 do you promote a "pure" desktop OS? What the hell would that even mean to many folks that live on their phones?
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You literally hit the nail on the head with that - it just wouldn't be profitable.
Desktops and laptops are not the only options any more, and Microsoft has finally seen the writing on the wall with these other market segments.

However, unlike the abomination that was Windows 8 (lesser extent on 8.1), Windows 10 actually works very well in the more portable markets, especially with Surfaces and x86-64 tablets.
Windows 7 just doesn't have these functionalities available, just as Windows XP did not have similar functionalities available to it when Windows 7 was emerging on the market.


Windows 7 was great for what it was. I've been using Windows 10 daily on all of my PCs for three years now. I hear all of the issues and horror stories and that's not good. I personally haven't had any more problem with Windows 10 than Windows 7 or 8.x. As much as people will bash Windows 10, what the hell else is there for me to use? Windows 10 works with fucking everything I need for work and play across multiple devices. Windows 7 would be pointless on something like a convertible Surface Book 2 with a high DPI screen. I use a lot of Microsoft Store apps, watch a lot of 4k Netflix with 5.1 surround. Again I get it if Windows 10 doesn't work for you or your situation. There's nothing that can replace it personally, we're moving to it aggressively at work.

For something that some bash as hard as Windows 10 and has hard as I've looked into alternatives, there's just no where else to go in my situation. There's just isn't.
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You are right, and while GNU/Linux and BSD are options, as is OS X, iOS, and Android (Droid/Linux), there are some things that only Windows can offer a solution to.
OS X would be the closest that could come to mainstream support, but even then, not all software is OS-agnostic, not to mention how much people are despising Apple's severe drop in hardware quality on their laptops lately.

I've squeezed about as much functionality out of Linux as I can, at least for the knowledge I have on it, but some things really can be done on Windows better.
Microsoft Office/O365 and the Adobe Suite - good luck with those on Linux, and before anyone says "just use a VM", type-II VMs do not have hardware-GPU support, which many photo and video editing softwares require, not counting a good 10-20% overhead hit on the CPU to boot.

Type-I VMs can do hardware-GPU pass-through support, but even then, this is hardly a mainstream setup or use-case scenario.
Running Windows on bare-metal is necessary for many people to do their jobs, let alone have fun and play - believe me, I feel your pain.
 
Lakados said:
It’s Microsoft, they could hand out free water on a hot day and people would be skeptical of it and there would be at least a dozen Redit threads of conspiracy theories from nanobots to LSD.
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Vault-Tec, is that you? :D
Really, though, nothing is free.

If the product is free, then you are the product - welcome to the 21st century! :p
 
Hagrid said:
I would pay for a windows 7 successor. They had a hell of a time just giving 10 away.
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If one is a keyboard and mouse only Windows user then sure. I'm not going to pay for an OS that breaks a Surface Book 2. For all of the bashing of Windows 10, a lot of people are actually using its features, pen, touch, Cortana, hell even the Store. I watch all of my Netflix and Hulu with the Store apps. A Windows 7 successor can't be a success if it blows up all of that stuff. Sure, I get adding in a million switches to turn of the telemetry, the Store, tiles, touch, etc. But Microsoft still has to support all of that stuff on 2 in 1 devices at the least.
 
Red Falcon said:
Vault-Tec, is that you? :D
Really, though, nothing is free.

If the product is free, then you are the product - welcome to the 21st century! :p
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It would be free, but it would get written off as community outreach and the whole thing counts as a tax deduction.

And no not Vault-Tec.
 
heatlesssun said:
If one is a keyboard and mouse only Windows user then sure. I'm not going to pay for an OS that breaks a Surface Book 2. For all of the bashing of Windows 10, a lot of people are actually using its features, pen, touch, Cortana, hell even the Store. I watch all of my Netflix and Hulu with the Store apps. A Windows 7 successor can't be a success if it blows up all of that stuff. Sure, I get adding in a million switches to turn of the telemetry, the Store, tiles, touch, etc. But Microsoft still has to support all of that stuff on 2 in 1 devices at the least.
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But don't forget about the fall creators update that, when installed, will reset all of those switches back to their original default settings! ;)
Really, though, this happened with the last big update from late 2017, and it reset all of the 802.1X settings - that was loads of fun, haha.
 
Lakados said:
There is nothing stopping them from purchasing it now, there is a paperwork process and it isn’t cheap but you can do it. Just gotta pay your yearly licensing fees.
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You're not wrong, but understanding the paperwork and completing it along with paying for a business class bulk license and supporting it's contract is highly prohibitive. You couple that with the fact that you'd need to go through the whole process again to upgrade to the newest version LTSB if you upgrade your hardware beyond what the previous version supported (at least this was the latest news I heard about how MS intended to squeeze businesses for more money if they thought they could use LTSB for future machines) and it isn't really feasible.
 
Red Falcon said:
But don't forget about the fall creators update that, when installed, will reset all of those switches back to their original default settings! ;)
Really, though, this happened with the last big update from late 2017, and it reset all of the 802.1X settings - that was loads of fun, haha.
Click to expand...

This is a problem as feature updates are complete reinstalls and they don't pick up all preexisting options. I've never claimed Windows 10 to be perfect. I think the situation has improved but far from perfect. This is a perfectly legitimate complaint.
 
heatlesssun said:
If one is a keyboard and mouse only Windows user then sure. I'm not going to pay for an OS that breaks a Surface Book 2. For all of the bashing of Windows 10, a lot of people are actually using its features, pen, touch, Cortana, hell even the Store. I watch all of my Netflix and Hulu with the Store apps. A Windows 7 successor can't be a success if it blows up all of that stuff. Sure, I get adding in a million switches to turn of the telemetry, the Store, tiles, touch, etc. But Microsoft still has to support all of that stuff on 2 in 1 devices at the least.
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Cortana is used by a lot of our users it integrates well with Office 365 calendars and Link which ties into the Mitel systems. We aren’t using much on the store yet because their VPP is delayed (last I checked) but once that is good to go most of our software is now available through it with the exception of our Accounting software but that is being upgraded to a web app.
The Pen works well for presentations and is also used by a lot of staff as well.
I am having a hard time seeing a windows 7 successor that doesn’t integrate seamlessly with all the systems that 10 does and as an enterprise user I see the same or less telemetry as windows 7 and far less than any flavour of Apples OS’s. We banned Android (with the exception of the Pixels) because they were transmitting enough data it was causing noticeable network slow downs, so Android users get to be on vLan 48 where they have 0 network priority.
 
ZLoth said:
Microsoft promised ten years of support when they released Windows 7 back in October, 2009. That's five years of mainstream support and five years of extended support. To put this in context....
  • Do you know what also got released in October, 2009? Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), and support ended for that version of Linux in April 2011, although you could upgrade the Linux to a later version.
  • Guess what also got released in August, 2009? That would be Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It is currently unsupported as of February 25, 2014.
  • Web browsers? Firefox 3.5 was released in June, 2009. Google Chrome 3 was released in October, 2009.
  • Should I throw in World of Warcraft? Patch 3.2.2 was released in September, 2009. Aren't we up to patch 7.2.5 by now?
  • Don't even say anything about the iOS or Android mobile operating systems.
But, please, tell us, once again, why Windows 7 isn't "long in the tooth".
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Great comparison. And this is one of those things that's great about Windows, the length of support, and something that's also very problematic about. Just keep supporting the same thing indefinitely while constantly upgrading it to support the latest and greatest.
 
heatlesssun said:
This is a problem as feature updates are complete reinstalls and they don't pick up all preexisting options. I've never claimed Windows 10 to be perfect. I think the situation has improved but far from perfect. This is a perfectly legitimate complaint.
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Yeah, that was kind of a one-off issue, as the other feature updates haven't reset too many critical functions like that one did.
Still, this is just the era we live in, and really, looking back to the 1960s through the 1990s, each respective decade had their own sets of issues and challenges just like we do today.
 
Skull_Angel said:
You're not wrong, but understanding the paperwork and completing it along with paying for a business class bulk license and supporting it's contract is highly prohibitive. You couple that with the fact that you'd need to go through the whole process again to upgrade to the newest version LTSB if you upgrade your hardware beyond what the previous version supported (at least this was the latest news I heard about how MS intended to squeeze businesses for more money if they thought they could use LTSB for future machines) and it isn't really feasible.
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LTSB doesn’t offer anything that you can’t do in Enterprise with playing with the registry or power shell. What it is great for us POS equipment, terminals and kiosks, that you want security updates for but you want locked down as hard as it gets. I honestly see it as their answer to XP imbedded which over the last 5 years has caused them nothing but pain.
 
ZLoth said:
Microsoft promised ten years of support when they released Windows 7 back in October, 2009. That's five years of mainstream support and five years of extended support. To put this in context....
  • Do you know what also got released in October, 2009? Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), and support ended for that version of Linux in April 2011, although you could upgrade the Linux to a later version.
  • Guess what also got released in August, 2009? That would be Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It is currently unsupported as of February 25, 2014.
  • Web browsers? Firefox 3.5 was released in June, 2009. Google Chrome 3 was released in October, 2009.
  • Should I throw in World of Warcraft? Patch 3.2.2 was released in September, 2009. Aren't we up to patch 7.2.5 by now?
  • Don't even say anything about the iOS or Android mobile operating systems.
But, please, tell us, once again, why Windows 7 isn't "long in the tooth".
Click to expand...
Granted that 9.10 wasn't a LTS (long time service) release of Ubuntu, but still, I do see your point, especially with the rest - even LTS releases of Ubuntu eventually end, and normally do not last for over a decade like Windows 7 will.
The reason the hurt is probably felt more by Windows 7 leaving, as it was when Windows XP left, is due to the extremely vast user-base and market share that OS holds, especially when compared to the rest.
 
Lakados said:
LTSB doesn’t offer anything that you can’t do in Enterprise with playing with the registry or power shell. What it is great for us POS equipment, terminals and kiosks, that you want security updates for but you want locked down as hard as it gets. I honestly see it as their answer to XP imbedded which over the last 5 years has caused them nothing but pain.
Click to expand...

Did they remove MS store/MS games/Cortana/EDGE/messager from Enterprise? I thought LTSB was the only truly bare-bones version of Win 10. As far as I'm aware, you still need a business class licensing agreement for Enterprise as well, but it isn't hardware locked like LTSB.
 
Lakados said:
Cortana is used by a lot of our users it integrates well with Office 365 calendars and Link which ties into the Mitel systems. We aren’t using much on the store yet because their VPP is delayed (last I checked) but once that is good to go most of our software is now available through it with the exception of our Accounting software but that is being upgraded to a web app.
The Pen works well for presentations and is also used by a lot of staff as well.
I am having a hard time seeing a windows 7 successor that doesn’t integrate seamlessly with all the systems that 10 does and as an enterprise user I see the same or less telemetry as windows 7 and far less than any flavour of Apples OS’s. We banned Android (with the exception of the Pixels) because they were transmitting enough data it was causing noticeable network slow downs, so Android users get to be on vLan 48 where they have 0 network priority.
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The truth is almost always in the middle. If you hate everything about Windows 10 and just want an better Windows 7 then obviously you don't like Windows 10. If you actually take advantage of what 10 can do that 7 can't then of course why would you want Windows 7. I was a long suffering Windows tablet and convertible guy. But damn I loved the idea but Microsoft never really committed to the concept until Windows 8 and they obviously went way to far on the tablet side. I think they got the idea right with 10. I used 10 with a keyboard and mouse and touch and pen every day. When you use it like that across different devices it make a LOT of sense. And I get "just throw in a million switches for everything" but that becomes very complicated. So with a keyboard and mouse device turn off tiles, disable the store, etc. but on a 2 in 1 turn of it on except when the 2 in 1 is connected to an external monitor and keyboard and mouse on Tuesdays?

Windows 10 bashers tend to think that NO ONE uses anything unique to 10 and are clamoring for Windows 7, meanwhile look at the onslaught of Windows 10 2 in 1 devices.
 
Skull_Angel said:
Did they remove MS store/MS games/Cortana/EDGE/messager from Enterprise? I thought LTSB was the only truly bare-bones version of Win 10. As far as I'm aware, you still need a business class licensing agreement for Enterprise as well, but it isn't hardware locked like LTSB.
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The Store is still there but you can remove it through powershell along with any unwanted fluff Just need to run it as admin. If the machine is domained then you have to do it as a user that has domain admin privileges but isn’t the domain admin itself.
 
As long as they don't drop atom support, I'm ok.

Hate to have to replace my 8" Winbook Windows tablet.
Upgraded fine to Windows 10, and I use it all the time. Nice to have a tablet running full windows (even if it's just 32 bit).
 
nutzo said:
As long as they don't drop atom support, I'm ok.

Hate to have to replace my 8" Winbook Windows tablet.
Upgraded fine to Windows 10, and I use it all the time. Nice to have a tablet running full windows (even if it's just 32 bit).
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As long as Intel keeps supporting it than it should be fine. Some of the Atoms are EOL’ed already and from what I understand they will still get security updates but not feature updates.
 
Lakados said:
The Store is still there but you can remove it through powershell along with any unwanted fluff Just need to run it as admin. If the machine is domained then you have to do it as a user that has domain admin privileges but isn’t the domain admin itself.
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I haven't played with the 90-day trials. Doing it that way doesn't cause any issues like it can for Pro? I know you can create an image of the install iso for Pro and edit it to remove fluff w/o creating issues, but major updates force the junk on you; does that happen when you remove fluff through powershell in Enterprise?

You've got me a bit curious; I'm just miffed that consumer 10 isn't power-user friendly because MS doesn't want it.
 
Lakados said:
As an enterprise user I am not able to find anything that windows 7 does better than windows 10 for me.
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As an enterprise admin, I'm unable to find anything win 10 does better than win 7 in most environments. I can name a list of shit it does worse though.
 
Red Falcon said:
Couldn't have said this better myself!
Will make support in enterprise much easier for years to come as well.
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I think that is yet to be determined. Just because they keep the same.branding doesn't mean that they won't do the same thing with the 12th anniversary update or whatever they choose to call it dropping support for older systems.

The funny thing is that Microsoft justifies this by the cost required to support these old systems. At the same time the Linux kernel still supports practically anything of any vintage.
 
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Join us, we have updates that don't annoy you. Also, we don't make your machine into an update torrent tracker too.

r_291851_ptMCw.jpg
 
DukenukemX said:
Join us, we have updates that don't annoy you. Also, we don't make your machine into an update torrent tracker too.

View attachment 83776
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I primarily use Linux at home. I run it as my primary OS and dual boot to Windows 10 only for games.

I'll be the first to admit - however - that there are tradeoffs.

Gaming is still way behind on Linux. Most titles are never supported and those that are usually perform much worse.

Also, program support is iffy. Office, Photoshop, etc. Many of these software packages don't exist on Linux. There are work-a-likes (like Gimp, and LibreOffice) but they don't have the full functionality of the latest versions on Windows. Croasover Office does allow you to run the windows version of office - however - which can be nice.

The OS itself however is such a relief to use compared to windows. Nothing forced, few things preinstalled, and those can always be uninstalled if desired. Essentially everything I hate about Windows is absent in all distributions of Linux I have tried. I guess this is what happens when you have an open source community of users developing it, rather than a for profit company with its own incentives, that may not align with yours.

It's really a shame that Valve wasn't successful in pushing the games industry to embrace Linux, because if they had it could really have triggered a golden era of desktop Linux, allowing us to ditch Microsoft once and for all.

Linux really is technically superior in just about every way, just starved for application support because Microsoft is the defacto standard OS everyone uses.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I think that is yet to be determined. Just because they keep the same.branding doesn't mean that they won't do the same thing with the 12th anniversary update or whatever they choose to call it dropping support for older systems.

The funny thing is that Microsoft justifies this by the coat required to support these old systems.
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They already did this with Windows 7 running on anything newer than Haswell CPUs last year, so it's not just Windows 10 and not supporting older systems or architectures that is the issue.
It's the exact same thing with iOS, Android, OS X, etc. and especially with rolling support from 32-bit to 64-bit in both ARM and x86-64 - why this somehow singles out Microsoft alone as being a PIA doesn't really make a lot of sense when it seems like every other software/OS company out there has been doing this for years.

At the same time the Linux kernel still supports practically anything of any vintage.
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Maybe for the 2.6.32 kernel, but good luck getting anything to run on that made the last 5+ years without issue.
For the 3.0.X and above kernels, depending on the branch of Linux, support for older equipment has been going away, especially for anything not 64-bit, regardless of the ISA.

For x86-64, 64-bit support only goes back to 2003, so how old are we talking here?
 
Dekoth-E- said:
As an enterprise admin, I'm unable to find anything win 10 does better than win 7 in most environments. I can name a list of shit it does worse though.
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What does 10 do worse than 7?
I'm legitimately asking.

One thing I know of is Active Directory console support - have to do some ridiculous hacks to get the full console working properly in 10 that is just naturally there in 7, which i think is pretty lame.
Outside of that, though, I haven't seen too many things overall that it doesn't do at least equally as good.
 
Red Falcon said:
They already did this with Windows 7 running on anything newer than Haswell CPUs last year, so it's not just Windows 10 and not supporting older systems or architectures that is the issue.
It's the exact same thing with iOS, Android, OS X, etc. and especially with rolling support from 32-bit to 64-bit in both ARM and x86-64 - why this somehow singles out Microsoft alone as being a PIA doesn't really make a lot of sense when it seems like every other software/OS company out there has been doing this for years.


Maybe for the 2.6.32 kernel, but good luck getting anything to run on that made the last 5+ years without issue.
For the 3.0.X and above kernels, depending on the branch of Linux, support for older equipment has been going away, especially for anything not 64-bit, regardless of the ISA.

For x86-64, 64-bit support only goes back to 2003, so how old are we talking here?
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What version of linux would you recommend for a Socket 939 Opteron on a Nforce 4 board that will only Run Kodi?
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
What version of linux would you recommend for a Socket 939 Opteron on a Nforce 4 board that will only Run Kodi?
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I would recommend Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS (Kernel 4.4.0) - http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04/
64-bit, of course. :)

As long as you aren't running any exotic or esoteric hardware on your HTPC (doesn't sound like you are) then everything should be supported out of the box.
I'm using this OS in a VM for a Plex server and it works great.

However, if things act weird, I would recommend going with Linux Mint 18.3 (Kernel 4.10.0) or 17.3 (Kernel 3.19 - EoL in 2019).
I had a friend who used to have that exact CPU+chipset combo, and it worked great for years - really makes me miss my socket 939 systems.

If you can, depending on how much transcoding you are doing, I would definitely recommend setting up a RAM drive if you have the available RAM to do so - beats the hell out of transcoding on a HDD or SSD, and won't reduce the lifespan of the SSD.
PM me if you need help doing this, and good luck! (y)
 
Skull_Angel said:
I haven't played with the 90-day trials. Doing it that way doesn't cause any issues like it can for Pro? I know you can create an image of the install iso for Pro and edit it to remove fluff w/o creating issues, but major updates force the junk on you; does that happen when you remove fluff through powershell in Enterprise?

You've got me a bit curious; I'm just miffed that consumer 10 isn't power-user friendly because MS doesn't want it.
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The early builds got messed up a little or they put the default apps back in, but I haven’t had any users with those problems for the last year or two.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
As an enterprise admin, I'm unable to find anything win 10 does better than win 7 in most environments. I can name a list of shit it does worse though.
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I am curious what issues you are having, I am the admin and haven’t had nearly the number of issues with 10 that we had with 7.
 
MV75 said:
The same? Really? They said that about windows 10 since the early 2000's? The bullshit is all yours.
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I think he meant more of the "doomsday" talk in general about the next OS release(s).
Not saying you are necessarily wrong, but only time (and Microsoft) will tell.
 
Lakados said:
The early builds got messed up a little or they put the default apps back in, but I haven’t had any users with those problems for the last year or two.
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Interesting. It hardly helps on the consumer side, but it's something to look into and might be worth playing around with. Thanks for the info.
 
heatlesssun said:
I'd love to just use Linux on the desktop. From the way it's advertised it's the perfect solution to all of Windows problems. But it introduces its own, like having shitty 3rd party support.
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If something does not exist can it still be shitty? Or is the shittyness of its absence enough to make the thing itself shitty.
 
Lakados said:
If something does not exist can it still be shitty? Or is the shittyness of its absence enough to make the thing itself shitty.
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Depends on the software and its support, but compared to Windows and OS X, there just isn't as much.
Microsoft Office (that's a huge one) and the Adobe Suite are two of them, and many AAA games do not yet support Linux.

^ Those three things are major killer apps, and while I know it can *technically* be done on Linux with WINE, that isn't mainstream and doesn't have a quick/automated install out of the box which most people need.
Yes, there are alternatives like Libre Office and a few video editing programs that are ok, but overall, they don't compare to the major players.

I see what he is saying, and I think he means just 3rd party support in general, which, even as much as I don't like it, I would have to agree with him on it. :)
 
Lakados said:
If something does not exist can it still be shitty? Or is the shittyness of its absence enough to make the thing itself shitty.
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That's actually a VERY GOOD question. Ok, Windows 10 is total shit for some. It completely supports everything I do without alteration besides Windows Media Center that I just stopped using much anyway because of streaming. I really don't want to be part of the evil empire on anything but the choices I get are essentially just stop doing what you're doing and do this. Ok, fair enough. Don't sell it like it's grandma that just needs a web browser. I'm not willing to throw everything away without some HUGE pluses.
 
chaos4u said:
hmm its quite possible that a intel PIII running a relatively up to date windows 7 is more secure than win 10 running on this decades intel processors

all you koolaid drinkers can get on board the newer is better boat, ill happily raise my glass to you all as your drown.
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