14 DAY TRIAL // Starting this month, Microsoft is no longer shipping updates to Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs powered by seventh-generation processors like Intel’s Kaby Lake and AMD’s Ryzen, but it turns out that the company has also banned older processors by accident.
Systems running Windows 7 and 8.1 on AMD Carrizo chips are no longer getting updates either, and the software giant said in a statement that support for these configurations would continue to be provided.
“Starting with the April 2017 Cumulative Update release, devices with an AMD Carrizo DDR4 processor running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 might start to receive a message that the processor is not supported with those versions of Windows. Microsoft intends to continue to support Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 with this processor and plans to address the issue causing the message in a future update,” Microsoft says.
There’s absolutely no ETA available right now as to when a fix would be provided, but Microsoft explains that the error appears after installing April 2017 updates.
New chips only supporting Windows 10
As per the company’s policy, Windows 10 is mandatory for Intel 7th-genration processors, AMD Bristol Ridge, and Qualcomm 8996, so systems running Windows 7 or 8.1 no longer receive updates. Computers that are banned from getting patches are provided with the following error:
“Windows could not search for new updates. An error occurred while checking for new updates for your computer. Error(s) found: Code 80240037 Windows Update encountered an unknown error.”
Additionally, Windows Update displays the following message when checking for new updates: “Unsupported hardware. 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 that you are currently using, your system will miss important security updates.”
The next Patch Tuesday takes place on May 9, but it remains to be seen if Microsoft releases a fix for systems affected by this accident in the meantime.