Microsoft will not support older Windows versions on upcoming PC Hardware

[ATMINSIDE]

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"...

They can update to Win10 now, for free. This gets them many years past 2020 when Win7 support ends. And, IIRC, you still get security updates past this point.
The hardware that exists at this point is supported by Win10, that won't change.

The only change is that, for new hardware (read; un-released hardware), Windows 10 and forward will be the only supported Microsoft operating system.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

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.

Ouch! Sounds like the motherboard may have a bad cap or needs a reflow! But, I would put PSU as the first thing to check.

The only strangeness I had that was anything like that, was with my Core 2 Duo E4500 on my Asus P5QL Pro motherboard, when CPU load line calibration was disabled. It would randomly fail to POST and randomly work like nothing happened, same kind of symptoms as bad solder joints and bad caps.

It does remind me of a story I heard with an LCD monitor that had bad caps.

 

[saturn]

What sucks the most about windows 10 being shoved down are throats is people like me that have to go and wipe/setup a pc as the GWX update lets anyone install windows 10.


Also don't for get that if there is a will, there is a way. Look at all the 3dfx drivers still being made by fans. And a3d cards can still be use in windows 7 even tho there was not even a XP driver for the cards.


EDIT:
How will this work with the mandated downgrade option required by OEM's for business customers?
At work HP lets us downgrade all the way back to 9x if I recall and they have to have to support OS on the system as mandated my M$ or something. It's funny I could order a new PC for work with ME on it.

We do get a lot of new windows 8 and 10 Pc's with 7 on them from HP.

 

[Woomack]

Ouch! Sounds like the motherboard may have a bad cap or needs a reflow! But, I would put PSU as the first thing to check.

It does remind me of a story I heard with an LCD monitor that had bad caps.

As I mentioned, it's Win10 issue and some other users were reporting similar issues after couple of blue screens ( like too high OC ).
I reinstalled OS yesterday and all is working fine now.

@saturn
MS is not considering upgrade/downgrade for Win10 as an option for business if you have group licenses. They assume that you buy new hardware and it's working with purchased licenses for couple of years till hardware upgrade.
If you have Win7/8 group licenses on a single key then after upgrade it will be signed to a single PC. As MS representative told me, it's like change to simple retail version of Windows. No comments.
Simply in business you have to buy OEM licenses or any of their form added by PC manufacturer ( like HP ). Within OEM license agreements, PC manufacturer which is selling OEM license is providing support so if HP or anyone else will guarantee downgrade then it's their problem, not MS.

You can't downgrade OS to Win 9x or anything lower than XP. I bet that not even XP is available anymore as it's not supported on skylake and officially not supported on haswell/haswell-e too. In theory there can be info in manufacturer docs ( probably because they're not updating it often ) but it simply won't work so they won't let you to pick such option.
Intel is not providing WinXP drivers for about 2 years now. All available chipset drivers are betas or modified older drivers which are working just because newer chipsets are not so much different. Still not all devices will work.

 

[saturn]

You can't downgrade OS to Win 9x or anything lower than XP. I bet that not even XP is available anymore as it's not supported on skylake and officially not supported on haswell/haswell-e too. In theory there can be info in manufacturer docs ( probably because they're not updating it often ) but it simply won't work so they won't let you to pick such option.
Intel is not providing WinXP drivers for about 2 years now. All available chipset drivers are betas or modified older drivers which are working just because newer chipsets are not so much different. Still not all devices will work.

HP will let us downgrade to 9x on a few PC's they sell, xp on most of their PC's and vista on just about all of their PC's. I discuses it with them when ordering are last batch of PC's as we need to keep one PC with a old OS for some legacy crap software that cant be ran in a VM that we're stuck with.

 

[c627627]

Intel is not providing WinXP drivers for about 2 years now. All available chipset drivers are betas or modified older drivers which are working just because newer chipsets are not so much different. Still not all devices will work.

I intend to buy the latest best available chipset before Windows 10 free upgrade offer ends and find out the hard way if I can dual boot Windows XP/10.

When is the last actual official day to update Windows 8 retail to Windows 10 for free?
Have new motherboards ever come out between April and July or do they usually come out before/after that time frame for marketing reasons?

What *exactly* do you expect not to work when I reboot from Windows 10 into Windows XP on latest Skylake motherboards?

 

[ATMINSIDE]

I intend to buy the latest best available chipset before Windows 10 free upgrade offer ends and find out the hard way if I can dual boot Windows XP/10.

When is the last actual official day to update Windows 8 retail to Windows 10 for free?
Have new motherboards ever come out between April and July or do they usually come out before/after that time frame for marketing reasons?

What *exactly* do you expect not to work when I reboot from Windows 10 into Windows XP on latest Skylake motherboards?

Last day to update is in the first post of this sticky:
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/...-Windows-10-Discussion-Thread-and-Information

AFAIK there's no way to install XP on Skylake. Best place to ask about this would be the benching section though, as XP is still best for SPi.

 

[Woomack]

HP will let us downgrade to 9x on a few PC's they sell, xp on most of their PC's and vista on just about all of their PC's. I discuses it with them when ordering are last batch of PC's as we need to keep one PC with a old OS for some legacy crap software that cant be ran in a VM that we're stuck with.

Then it's clearly not Intel platform or you were talking with someone from sales who has no idea what is talking about. It's nearly impossible to install WinXP, not to mention 9x on new hardware. You can install xp on haswell with various issues ( like lack of drivers ) but 9x won't even boot on SB/IB so ~6 year old chipsets.
Vista is like Win7. I mean about the same drivers work on both so it's no big problem to install OS on new hardware.

@c627627
It's really hard to install XP on Skylake without additional issues. This platform has no IDE mode and xp can't recognize standard storage devices ( based on standard drivers ). There are no drivers provided by manufacturers as no one is supporting XP anymore. Some users made it on modified drivers , some couldn't. To install it you have to prepare USB drive with couple of special drivers. Anyway it's not guaranteed you will make it. I couldn't install it on my board. There are no drivers for most new devices so installing XP is good only if you need it for some benchmarks. For work it's waste of time.

If in some magical way you will be able to install XP on Skylake then it will be limited to basic drivers so only USB 2.0 ports will work ( usually there are 2 ), probably LAN won't work not to mention about WiFi, BT, additional features of IGP ( outputs, acceleration for browsers and some more ) ...

 

[c627627]

I spent a bit of time looking for the last day to upgrade in that link ATMINSIDE and could not find it. I could find the first day to upgrade but not the actual official Microsoft *last* day to upgrade. Is it 364 days later, is it 365 days later? My question is at 11:59 on what day in 2016 and in what time zone, is the last day to activate Windows 10 for free if anyone knows. At what time on what day in which time zone do Microsoft servers stop free activation?

I would like to ask more questions on Windows XP and Skylake before taking it over to benchmarking sections. You start with IDE... Are you talking beyond having to integrate AHCI into the Windows XP ISO using nLite?

I am trying to think what else would be needed as I would transfer my video card and my USB 3 card to Skylake, both of which work on all the OS on my multi boot which includes Windows XP. I have extra cards for sound and LAN...


And to address you last point, work is absolutely one of the reasons as you cannot group files or folders *anywhere* on Windows 7/8/10 except on Desktop. I have to reboot into Windows XP for work in order to group files on different parts of the screen when I am sorting them out. You cannot switch off auto arrange on Windows 7/8/10. There is a reg hack but it breaks other features so it is not a solution. Rebooting into Windows XP for work is the only solution.

Not to mention how Windows XP does not use BCD and so it is perfect for rebooting into it to image other OS on the multiboot.

 

[Kenrou]

Out of curiosity, how does this translate to AMD ? can we still install any OS on FX or ZEN ?

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

I spent a bit of time looking for the last day to upgrade in that link ATMINSIDE and could not find it. I could find the first day to upgrade but not the actual official Microsoft *last* day to upgrade. Is it 364 days later, is it 365 days later? My question is at 11:59 on what day in 2016 and in what time zone, is the last day to activate Windows 10 for free if anyone knows. At what time on what day in which time zone do Microsoft servers stop free activation?

I would like to ask more questions on Windows XP and Skylake before taking it over to benchmarking sections. You start with IDE... Are you talking beyond having to integrate AHCI into the Windows XP ISO using nLite?

I am trying to think what else would be needed as I would transfer my video card and my USB 3 card to Skylake, both of which work on all the OS on my multi boot which includes Windows XP. I have extra cards for sound and LAN...


And to address you last point, work is absolutely one of the reasons as you cannot group files or folders *anywhere* on Windows 7/8/10 except on Desktop. I have to reboot into Windows XP for work in order to group files on different parts of the screen when I am sorting them out. You cannot switch off auto arrange on Windows 7/8/10. There is a reg hack but it breaks other features so it is not a solution. Rebooting into Windows XP for work is the only solution.

Not to mention how Windows XP does not use BCD and so it is perfect for rebooting into it to image other OS on the multiboot.

The answer: I have until July 29th. After that, I'll have to pay for Win 10.

But there are some caveats. The free upgrade applies only to Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1. So if you haven't upgraded Windows 7 to SP1 or Windows 8 to 8.1, you'll have to perform those tasks first. Also, you have one year from July 29 to upgrade your PC to Windows 10 for free. After that year is up, you'll have to purchase Windows 10 yourself.

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-reserve-your-free-copy-of-windows-10/

 

[ATMINSIDE]

I spent a bit of time looking for the last day to upgrade in that link ATMINSIDE and could not find it. I could find the first day to upgrade but not the actual official Microsoft *last* day to upgrade. Is it 364 days later, is it 365 days later? My question is at 11:59 on what day in 2016 and in what time zone, is the last day to activate Windows 10 for free if anyone knows. At what time on what day in which time zone do Microsoft servers stop free activation?

One year, therefore 7/29/2016.
I don't know the exact time, but your post had just asked for the day.

Out of curiosity, how does this translate to AMD ? can we still install any OS on FX or ZEN ?

It'll depend on driver support. I would assume only 7 and newer for ZEN.

 

[Janus67]

I spent a bit of time looking for the last day to upgrade in that link ATMINSIDE and could not find it. I could find the first day to upgrade but not the actual official Microsoft *last* day to upgrade. Is it 364 days later, is it 365 days later? My question is at 11:59 on what day in 2016 and in what time zone, is the last day to activate Windows 10 for free if anyone knows. At what time on what day in which time zone do Microsoft servers stop free activation?

I would like to ask more questions on Windows XP and Skylake before taking it over to benchmarking sections. You start with IDE... Are you talking beyond having to integrate AHCI into the Windows XP ISO using nLite?

I am trying to think what else would be needed as I would transfer my video card and my USB 3 card to Skylake, both of which work on all the OS on my multi boot which includes Windows XP. I have extra cards for sound and LAN...


And to address you last point, work is absolutely one of the reasons as you cannot group files or folders *anywhere* on Windows 7/8/10 except on Desktop. I have to reboot into Windows XP for work in order to group files on different parts of the screen when I am sorting them out. You cannot switch off auto arrange on Windows 7/8/10. There is a reg hack but it breaks other features so it is not a solution. Rebooting into Windows XP for work is the only solution.

Not to mention how Windows XP does not use BCD and so it is perfect for rebooting into it to image other OS on the multiboot.

If you run win10, you have free access to hyperv. You can install an xp virtual machine and make a share and map it for easy searching on the vm?

 

[c627627]

Microsoft only has official reference to the actual end date July 29, 2016 but not the time when their servers will switch off free Windows Activation.
That end date is listed here http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/upgrade-to-windows-10-faq
under What is the free upgrade to Windows 10?.

I bet you there will be a rush on those activation servers on that last day.
I will try to find out the exact time of switch off.


I will take my chances with figuring out how to install Windows XP on Skylake, I hope I can do it, I think I can.


I understand ALL updates ended for Windows 8.0 ended last week (even though security updates continue to be available for Windows XP/Vista/7), what is the latest Windows 8.1 ISO version and where can it be downloaded from Microsoft?
EDIT: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows8

 

[Woomack]

here you have guide from asus oc team how to install XP from USB drive ( page 19 ):
http://www.mediafire.com/view/s1d3wtulam1bku7/ocguide0722c.pdf

It doesn't work for me but some others said they made it work.

Here is the latest AHCI driver modified for XP. Released after the guide so maybe it will help.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/5c3t05284lsg8sz/iaStor_skl.rar

Good luck

 

[saturn]

Then it's clearly not Intel platform or you were talking with someone from sales who has no idea what is talking about. It's nearly impossible to install WinXP, not to mention 9x on new hardware. You can install xp on haswell with various issues ( like lack of drivers ) but 9x won't even boot on SB/IB so ~6 year old chipsets.
Vista is like Win7. I mean about the same drivers work on both so it's no big problem to install OS on new hardware.

9x is only available on some sort of Pos system. XP it available for most of there newer desktops but not allinones. we have some at work with XP on them, they are however limited to basic drivers and some odd ball drivers HP has.