Microsoft quietly stopped supporting Windows 7 on legacy devices
Probably owners of PCs with processors released earlier than Pentium 4 will not get service packs for the popular Windows 7 operating system now. And this despite the official information from Microsoft that the support period for the G7 has been extended until 2020 . Microsoft has almost secretly stopped supporting Windows 7 on devices without SSE2 support. Information about this appeared on the online portal ComputerWorld. The SSE2 extension is a set of instructions that Intel has designed for its products. The 144-instruction built-in extension originally appeared in Pentium 4 class processors. Confused storyIn March this year, in the explanation for the periodic update for the "seven" there was a comment on its compatibility with SSE2. In particular, they talked about a STOP error (aka blue screen) that appears on PCs that do not support this extension. Additionally, it was reported that Microsoft specialists are working on this issue, and will soon present a working update. The same error later appeared in subsequent continuous updates (for April and May). However, now the description text has been supplemented with a phrase that Microsoft knows about an existing error in a certain number of users who have already removed the network drivers, but after that it was not possible to reinstall them (after the update was released before May 8, 2018). According to the company, technicians will understand the matter and will later announce the actual results. Further, the information about the patch (closer to June) was edited, and the description of the problem itself disappeared from the information. In the new message from Microsoft, there is only an explanation that the company is working on fixing the error, and soon the update appeared in one of the next releases. Attentive Windows owners noticed that in mid-June the text description of the next security update was edited again - the data on the problem was simply deleted. And also corrected "retroactively" the information about the previous patches (for March-April-May). Now, instead of officially promising to "fix everything, but then" Microsoft has recommended using a PC on processors that support SSE2. System vulnerabilitiesSusan Bradley, a dedicated Windows patching publisher, correlates this kind of corporate action with the existing Meltdown and Specter vulnerabilities. Perhaps the patches created to fix them affect PC performance more than Microsoft and Intel can officially acknowledge. In early 2018, all Intel processors released since 1995 were affected by these vulnerabilities. They made it possible to use certain flaws in the system, which in a certain situation could lead hackers to the user's personal information. At the same time, it became known that to fix the flaw it would be necessary to isolate kernel memory separately from user processes. This, in turn, meant a decrease in the normal performance of a certain class of processors. The Topic of Article: Microsoft quietly stopped supporting Windows 7 on legacy devices. |
