Microsoft will not support older Windows versions on upcoming PC Hardware

WoW this is... awkward i guess because there's still a lot of people that use WinXP and 7...

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/mi...windows-versions-on-upcoming-pc-hardware.html

Good.

How is it good forcing people to spend $$$ to upgrade hardware when it's not necessary, especially when W10 was made to have a small footprint and work well with older hardware (better than W7/8.1) ? am i missing something ?

"Compared to Windows 7 PC’s, Skylake when combined with Windows 10, enables up to 30x better graphics and 3x the battery life" ??? WHAT ??? since when ???

Older OS have no support already so why they should waste money on updates for non-supported OS ?
Intel is already not supporting older OS than Win7. Try to download drivers for anything older and you will see.
On the other hand older hardware works on Win10 only because of default drivers integrated in OS. If you delete some of the drivers then the only fix will be reinstalling Win10. USB drivers are good example.

That skylake+win10 mix is pure marketing. I saw that on Intel/Microsoft conference too. In theory it's faster and offers power saving but only in some situations what barely happens in real life. In real, laptop batteries are getting better but smaller so end user can barely see any difference. These tests were made on IGP with additional turbo and power saving states. For that you need drivers available for Win8.1/10.
There is still a lot of users who stick to Win7 so they want to convince them to move to 10. Somehow various issues of Win10 make many users go back to Win7.

Woomack said:

There is still a lot of users who stick to Win7 so they want to convince them to move to 10. Somehow various issues of Win10 make many users go back to Win7.

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Granted W10 is faster/stabler/more secure (privacy issues aside) then W7/8/8.1, and so far only issues i had was with Th2 being slower (on my setup) then original with a fresh install. I would have upgraded permanently but for those privacy issues... Spybot Anti-Beacon gets rid of some of the problems but i have no guarantees that it stops everything

Well, I guess I'll just not upgrade my hardware then if they're going to force me to use a specific OS. What if I need to run XP or 7 in order to run some specific business-related software that isn't compatible with 8/8.1/10? Because there are businesses out there that are running software from 10+ years ago (over 20 years ago in the case of one company I worked for).

Sometimes different OS versions are important for some things (such as business software, benching, etc...).

Maybe they will force me to use dare I say... LINUX! Assuming it even has drivers for newer hardware.

Besides, all the built-in spyware makes me nervous about using the OS anyway. They don't need to know every single move I make on my PC, and it isn't exactly personal (or private) if an entire company is spying on every thing you do with your Personal Computer.

I wouldn't mind running win8.1 on a back-up machine. I know MS is using strong arm tactics, but in reality they are correct in not supporting any old OS. No money in it. As for spying, sure they can spy on me all they want. I'm sure they'll enjoy all the p0rn I watch as well

Unless I can find an alternative OS that will run my games flawlessly, I'm stuck with winblows as well.

Tech Tweaker said:

What if I need to run XP or 7 in order to run some specific business-related software that isn't compatible with 8/8.1/10? Because there are businesses out there that are running software from 10+ years ago (over 20 years ago in the case of one company I worked for).

Besides, all the built-in spyware makes me nervous about using the OS anyway. They don't need to know every single move I make on my PC, and it isn't exactly personal if an entire company is spying on every thing you do with your Personal Computer.

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+1 to this. The problem everyone seems to be overlooking with the spying is not the pr0n or cracked stuff everyone has, is card/bank/transaction life/family details ending up in a obscure MS database ripe for hacking. Now imagine this for COMPANIES who do thousands of transactions every day. It's hard enough as it is to keep track of all the spyware/malware/virus/trojans/etc on the web, now we got it on our own OS ?

My own family has a small business which still runs W7 for the simple reason there has been no need whatsoever to upgrade. Now they are going to be FORCED to get new hardware because of a shady company with delusions of being CIA (or that works for it) ? were not even American, why do we have to be subjected to it ?

Why does MS not do for example a different version without all the spyware for the standard price (or maybe a tad extra cause fck you) for companies ?

No, they're not forced to get new hardware. The only way you're forced to get new hardware is if you get the new OS.
For existing systems there's still long term support for 7, 8, and 8.1.

Win7 ends in 2020, how much are you willing to bet the next version will have all the bad elements of Win10

This reminds me of the Windows 98 issue with AMD processors, where Windows 2000 and XP perform better.

If you put Windows 98, even good ol' Windows 98 SE on an AMD, it will be slower than Windows 2000! 3D Mark 2001 SE results take a tumble! IIRC.
And likely SuperPi takes a tumble, too!

The reason is that AMD processors can't use the update.sys microcode injection while Intel processors can. This means an Athlon will get killed by a Pentium 4 on Windows 98 SE!

(This is true with T-bird and later)

And it's still possible for Windows 8.1 to perform well, if not Windows 7 SP1 as well.

This may just be FUD, like the FUD that Microsoft apparently spread about defragging the registry resulting in Windows being corrupted.

Microsoft was already guilty of FUD with Skylake before this...

Kenrou said:

Win7 ends in 2020, how much are you willing to bet the next version will have all the bad elements of Win10

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Okay, so you're telling me that in four years' time they won't need new hardware to replace a system that's already slightly aged?

I'm confused.

If I go buy a new rig how is MS forcing me to only use Win 10?

The company has changed hardware requirements for supporting older versions of Windows, by only supporting new silicon on Windows 10 moving forward.

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The above quote doesn't make any sense to me. Is microsoft cutting off all updates to Windows 10 and lower?

For example, Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intel’s upcoming “Kaby Lake” silicon, Qualcomm’s upcoming “8996” silicon, and AMD’s upcoming “Bristol Ridge” silicon.

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So Microsoft is making the hardware manufactures implement something at the hardware level? If so, what's the point of Zen or any new hardware?

Silver_Pharaoh said:

I'm confused.

If I go buy a new rig how is MS forcing me to only use Win 10?


The above quote doesn't make any sense to me. Is microsoft cutting off all updates to Windows 10 and lower?

So Microsoft is making the hardware manufactures implement something at the hardware level? If so, what's the point of Zen or any new hardware?

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Past Skylake you must use Win10 or higher, is what I gather from this, not if you go buy something that exists in this day and age.

Windows will still be updated on the update plan that was already promised.

ATMINSIDE said:

Past Skylake you must use Win10 or higher, is what I gather from this, not if you go buy something that exists in this day and age.

Windows will still be updated on the update plan that was already promised.

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I see. Thank you for clearing it up.

I don't like that... Another horrible choice. Nice....

At least they are going to follow through with the Windows updates for now.

ATMINSIDE said:

Okay, so you're telling me that in four years' time they won't need new hardware to replace a system that's already slightly aged?

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They are running a file/accounting system from WinXP era, has to be in compatibility mode to run properly in Win7, last time i checked they still had a Pentium 4 with 4gb ram or somesuch, you can do the math. Like i said, there has been no need to upgrade, it's an office computer. I can bet you whatever you want there's many such small business that do the same, adding new hardware/new computer needlessly is just another financial burden they don't want/need


In my eyes at least it's a clear case of "if it isn't broken don't mess with it". It runs perfectly fine so why change ?

Win10 is faster and is using less memory and space on hdd. However most bigger updates are causing issues for many users. Most updates on my computers are not even installing lately.

After couple of blue screens you can also stuck in a point where OS will throw the same blue screen randomly even though you solved the issue. Couple of days ago I was overclocking memory. I pushed it too much and I saw blue screen. When I back to stock then now it takes 4-5 restarts to boot win10 as in most cases OS is showing the same blue screen which can mean many things. After boot, OS is 100% stable. The only way to fix it is to make full recovery or reinstall OS.

I had no issues with Win10 for about 4 months after release. Most my co-workers weren't so lucky.
Right now there are various issues on older hardware and many of them are caused by updates made by windows - which are also automatic. One colleague lost all USB ports in his laptop as windows changed driver to one which isn't working. Seems like you can only reinstall driver and all will be fine ... but there is no driver at all for Win10 on older hardware. Now tell programmer with couple of projects on the way to reinstall OS.
On couple of computers I had to make recovery 2-3 times because after updates something was constantly crashing.

On home computers almost all works good but there are sometimes issues like Win10 can't connect network drives but after restart all works good. It happens quite often. I also stuck on adding user rights to folders. Even though I had full admin rights I couldn't write or delete some files and folders ( not system files ). When you make 2-3 times recovery in a row you may also have this issue while trying to delete windows.old folders or trying to clean old system files.

There are many other issues which are annoying and usually appear after windows updates.
Win10 in general isn't bad but is not perfect and MS should test all updates much better before they release them. They even published updates which were deleting ( even random ) files or could crash OS. Most of them were not available after 1-2 days but in this time many users had issues with their OS.

Kenrou said:

They are running a file/accounting system from WinXP era, has to be in compatibility mode to run properly in Win7, last time i checked they still had a Pentium 4 with 4gb ram or somesuch, you can do the math. Like i said, there has been no need to upgrade, it's an office computer. I can bet you whatever you want there's many such small business that do the same, adding new hardware/new computer needlessly is just another financial burden they don't want/need


In my eyes at least it's a clear case of "if it isn't broken don't mess with it". It runs perfectly fine so why change ?

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Since its perfectly fine, why change hardware? You won't need to change the operating system unless you change hardware.

Rather than an older OS being the only OS, sometimes for testing purposes people have multi-boots.
How exactly is this limitation implemented making it "physically" impossible to install a dual boot between Windows 10 and other?

How would they stop Windows 8 from being installed when all Windows 10 drivers should work with Windows 8?


EDIT: It appears that the term "official support" is being used so this appears to mean calling Microsoft for help type of support which most of us never do....
Correct me if I'm wrong but we're still ok installing whatever we want and we'll get to download security updates just not get phonecall support?

ATMINSIDE said:

Since its perfectly fine, why change hardware? You won't need to change the operating system unless you change hardware.

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Because supposedly in 4 years they will have to change to W10 whether they want to or not IF they can keep the hardware and install/run the OS fine, if not they would have to buy the license and/or a new computer (some already come with it, i'm sketchy on the details of whether you can use it in a business).

Am i mistaken ? if so, can i get some clarification ?

My point being W10 is being slowly shoved down our collective throats AND it comes with (a lot of) spyware built in. The fact that some people have no problems with it is fairly unsettling, it's like running around with with a neon banner saying "i hate my money, please hack me"...