Microsoft Officially Blocks Windows 7/8.1 Updates For Kaby Lake And Ryzen Chips

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Bad news to those who are intending to update to the latest Kaby Lake Intel and AMD Ryzen processor, they will not be able to run Windows 7 or 8.1 on their devices.

Microsoft announced last year that it will block updates on some processors using the two versions of their operating system. Now the tech giant has made it official.

Ars Tecnica reveals that Microsoft intended to include Skylake in the "no update" policy but the company decided to just provide security fixes for Skylake systems running Windows 7 and 8.1. However, there is no difference because there is already extended support which offers security fixes as well. In the case of Windows 8.1 users, they are likely to miss out on the security fixes since the OS is only in mainstream support until January 2018.

Making matters worse is that Microsoft is strictly enforcing this policy for the Kaby Lake and Ryzen processors. It intends to implement a hard block with Windows Update completely blocking the said processors. The latest security patch seemed to download and work on the two systems. While the policy is still not in effect, it is only a matter of time before it gets implemented.

Science Times reports that although Windows 7 and 8.1 can still be installed on Ryzen and Kaby Lake, they will miss out on all updates including security fixes. Once it takes effect, pop up messages will appear saying "Your PC uses a processor that is designed for the latest version of Windows. Because the processor is not supported together with the Windows version you are currently using, your system will miss important security updates."

The "no update" policy will affect upcoming CPU releases from the AMD and Intel brand. Microsoft bares that the policy is designed to encourage users of the two operating systems to upgrade to Windows 10 which is much better than Windows 7 and 8.1. At the same time, this is also their way of getting out of supporting the older Windows versions which they say is keeping them from moving forward and be innovative.