Windows 7 update lockout claims older Intel, AMD processors

From InfoWorld: Microsoft continues to shoot itself in the foot with buggy detection software, no documentation, and an infernal drive to block Windows Update on seemingly random machines. Now, some older Intel and AMD processors are unexpectedly getting the blockade treatment.

The carnage started more than a year ago, when Microsoft declared it would no longer support Windows 7 or 8.1 on the new sixth-generation Intel Skylake processors. Microsoft backed down in several steps, finally saying that it would not support Win7 on seventh-generation Kaby Lake and Bristol Ridge processors, but left open the question of which Skylake and older AMD processors would get the update shaft.

Starting earlier this month, Microsoft bared its fangs, in the form of the "Unsupported hardware" message, followed by a complete shutdown of Windows Update on the identified, presumably seventh-generation, machine.

Microsoft admitted a few days later that it had accidentally hobbled legitimate sixth-generation Carrizo DDR4 machines with the Windows Update block, in spite of official assurances that the Carrizo line was exempt from the lockdown. Now I'm seeing reports that machines with other, much older processors, have been blocked as well.

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