Microsoft to support Skylake on Windows 7 and 8.1 after all
Microsoft announced back in January that future processors would only be supported by the company's Windows 10 operating system and not previous versions of Windows.
This came as a surprise to many users and businesses, as Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 are still supported by the company. In fact, Windows 8.1 is still on its general support schedule while Windows 7 is on extended support already.
Many users saw this as another attempt by Microsoft to get customers to upgrade to Windows 10 or buy devices that ship with Windows 10 installed as the operating system.
Back then, Microsoft wanted to support Intel Skylake processors only on a selection of business devices, and only until mid-2017.
Microsoft to support Skylake on Windows 7 and 8.1 after all
Microsoft published an update to its "silicon support policy" for Windows yesterday on the official Windows blog.
The main change is that Microsoft, listening to feedback and all, decided to extend the support policy for 6th generation Intel Core (Skylake) processors to the end of support dates for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
This means that Skylake processors are supported on Windows 7 until January 14, 2020, and on Windows 8.1 until January 10, 2023.
According to Microsoft, the change was made possible by Intel and OEM partners who "will be performing security update validation testing and upgrade testing for 6th Gen Intel Core systems running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1".
What this does not mean however is that future platforms, Intel's upcoming 7th generation Kaby Lake and AMD's 7th generation processors like Bristol Ridge will also be supported on previous versions of Windows.
Microsoft states that these 7th generation processor families will only be supported on Windows 10, and that all future silicon releases will require the latest release of Windows 10.
It is still unclear what "not supported" means practically. Does it mean that Windows 7 or 8.1 operating systems cannot be installed on devices running 7th generation processors? Or is support merely a factor in the business world, with Microsoft not support systems running these processors?
If it is the former, it would mean that Microsoft would block customers from installing a previous version of Windows on devices running these processors. Customers affected by this would have two options: install Windows 10, or switch to another operating system supporting these processors (which most likely means a Linux variant).
OMG, the amount of bitc#^ng you guys do about Microsoft…
If Bill Gates ever read all this, he’d probably hire some strippers to whip you all so hard!!!
Why don’t you install Windows XP, or better yet, GW BASICS.
Microsoft have banged the final nail in the coffin for me personally, i had planned to use Windows 7 until 2020 but with this latest stunt…
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/08/windows-7-8-1-moving-to-windows-10s-cumulative-update-model/
That dead line has moved up and I’ll be migrating to Linux in the next couple of months.
Martin, as for your last paragraph, a third option would be to run the unsupported OS as a virtual desktop.
Martin, please delete the duplicate comment and this comment. I only want one comment of mine.
Ofcourse it was just micro$oft’s fud. When did Windows needed drivers to run on a CPU? My 3770k released in 2012 runs perfectly with 7 7600, which was released in 2009. There is no way it has any Ivy Bridge “Official Support [TM] [c] [R]” in it because of this timeframe.
Windows 8.1 is currently the best version IMHO. I will try to be objective. Here’s why I think it’s the best:
Windows 8.1 has the following benefits for me over Windows 7:
– USB 3.0 support. Even though Windows 7 PCs do have USB 3.0 drivers, Windows 8.1 supports USB Attached SCSI protocol which makes UASP flash drives much faster than USB 3.0 on Windows 7. UASP with USB 3.0 is a significant speed boost over USB 2.0.
– USB Type C connector with KB3103696
– Bluetooth Low Energy (LE)/Bluetooth SMART support means I can use devices like Bluetooth wireless mouse which supports the Bluetooth 4.0 LE standard or LE headsets. The batteries in these devices last for a long time.
– 802.11ac. With a fast 802.11ac router, 2 PCs with PCIe/NVM Express SSDs, you get amazing WiFi speeds. (OK, after doing some testing on Windows 7, it turns out, as long as you have the right drivers installed under Windows 7 and an 802.11ac router, you will get the same faster than N speeds as Windows 8 on 7 as well. It’s only that Windows 7 continues to report your radio as 802.11n.)
– Offloaded Data Transfers for file copying
– More WMI classes and PowerShell cmdlets
– Miracast wireless streaming to a display which 8.1 supports (although you could also use Windows 7 with Intel WiDi or buy a Chromecast dongle). But Miracast in 8.1 lets you not only mirror your display wirelessly to the second display but also extend your desktop to it. Like a wireless multiple monitors solution.
– Windows 8.1 supports external manifests for application executables (“PreferExternalManifest”=dword:00000001) without any side effects of Windows 7 like the Network icon breaking. This is important if you are using a High resolution/High DPI display because Microsoft f***ed up DPI scaling with Windows 7. Windows 7 DPI scaling is broken, Windows 8.1 actually works. You can modify any app’s manifest to scale it properly.
– The DPI scaling engine in Windows 8.1 loads much earlier than Windows 7 so apps which load at startup are scaled properly
– Windows 8.1 has better WinSxS cleanup using Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase
– Chkdsk Spotfix ability, Hyper-V. Those who miss Virtual PC can get VirtualBox
– Most issues on the software side were resolved for me by using third party apps – Classic Shell, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker, Classic Task Manager, Equalizer APO, Google Chrome, Everything Search, PerigeeCopy, OldNewExplorer, FileSearchEX, VistaSwitcher, Media Player Classic – Home Cinema, and reinstating Sidebar Gadgets, Classic Games, classic MSConfig, various tray applet fixes, ERUNT, AutoHotkey, EasyBCD, UxStyle plus a custom theme, WindowsFirewallControl etc
– All the Metro crap uninstalled, default programs set to Win32 apps, Group Policies to disable crap like OneDrive, Bing Search and Customer Experience Improvement Program, it is OK.
– DOZENS of Registry fixes to make it work like the way I want – more like Windows XP Professional and Windows 7 so Windows 8.1 is now a pleasant and stable experience!!
– Media Center is missing but Kodi is better. Between Kodi and its addons you can do everything.
– Aero Glass project is there if you miss Aero. Personally I don’t miss Aero’s transparencies any more. I prefer a custom theme. From a usability perspective, I find the Windows 8 theme is uglier compared to Windows 7 but the visual cues that help usability are better. For example, it is easier to tell the active window due to the use of solid colors in the title bar compared to transparencies. The baby blue selection color in context menus is also more visible in the Windows 8 theme vs Windows 7.
– Vastly superior virtual machine performance as a guest OS. I would like to stress this especially. Windows 7 and Windows 10 perform abysmally on my host running VirtualBox, Windows 8.1 performs extremely well.
So in general, I prefer Windows 8.1 over 7 because of better DPI scaling, better support of newer hardware technologies like Bluetooth low energy, NVM Express SSD TRIM, USB 3.0, Miracast, performance improvements to I/O. Windows 7 is still excellent but on a high res display, the DPI scaling isn’t up to it, USB and SSD I/O performance is worse, latest Bluetooth peripherals and wireless displays don’t work.
Windows 10, I am finding is just fluff and gimmickry and lots of annoyances which are hard to disable or impossible. It has some core/under the hood improvements but 8.1 has most of them too minus the silly and getting-in-the-way stuff which is essential for a serious workstation class OS. I don’t find the silly stuff like Cortana and all the dumbed down Metro UI forced on me useful at all.
That said, I would like to hear others’ point of view too on this. Do they have objective reasons on why they prefer Windows 10 over 7 or 8 or why they prefer Windows 7 over 10?
Windows 8.1 is currently the best version IMHO. I will try to be objective. Here’s why I think it’s the best:
Windows 8.1 has the following benefits for me over Windows 7:
– USB 3.0 support. Even though Windows 7 PCs do have USB 3.0 drivers, Windows 8.1 supports USB Attached SCSI protocol which makes UASP flash drives much faster than USB 3.0 on Windows 7. UASP with USB 3.0 is a significant speed boost over USB 2.0.
– USB Type C connector with KB3103696
– Bluetooth Low Energy (LE)/Bluetooth SMART support means I can use devices like Bluetooth wireless mouse which supports the Bluetooth 4.0 LE standard or LE headsets. The batteries in these devices last for a long time.
– 802.11ac. With a fast 802.11ac router, 2 PCs with PCIe/NVM Express SSDs, you get amazing WiFi speeds. (OK, after doing some testing on Windows 7, it turns out, as long as you have the right drivers installed under Windows 7 and an 802.11ac router, you will get the same faster than N speeds as Windows 8 on 7 as well. It’s only that Windows 7 continues to report your radio as 802.11n.)
– Offloaded Data Transfers for file copying (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/drivers/ifs/offloaded-data-transfers)
– More WMI classes and PowerShell cmdlets
– Miracast wireless streaming to a display which 8.1 supports (although you could also use Windows 7 with Intel WiDi or buy a Chromecast dongle). But Miracast in 8.1 lets you not only mirror your display wirelessly to the second display but also extend your desktop to it. Like a wireless multiple monitors solution.
– Windows 8.1 supports external manifests for application executables (“PreferExternalManifest”=dword:00000001) without any side effects of Windows 7 like the Network icon breaking. This is important if you are using a High resolution/High DPI display because Microsoft f***ed up DPI scaling with Windows 7. Windows 7 DPI scaling is broken, Windows 8.1 actually works. You can modify any app’s manifest to scale it properly.
– The DPI scaling engine in Windows 8.1 loads much earlier than Windows 7 so apps which load at startup are scaled properly
– Windows 8.1 has better WinSxS cleanup using Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase
– Chkdsk Spotfix ability, Hyper-V. Those who miss Virtual PC can get VirtualBox
– Most issues on the software side were resolved for me by using third party apps – Classic Shell, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker, Classic Task Manager, Equalizer APO, Google Chrome, Everything Search, PerigeeCopy, OldNewExplorer, FileSearchEX, VistaSwitcher, Media Player Classic – Home Cinema, and reinstating Sidebar Gadgets, Classic Games, classic MSConfig, various tray applet fixes, ERUNT, AutoHotkey, EasyBCD, UxStyle plus this theme (http://winaero.com/blog/make-active-window-more-visible-on-windows-8-1-taskbar-with-pressed-button-look/), WindowsFirewallControl etc
– All the Metro crap uninstalled, default programs set to Win32 apps, Group Policies to disable crap like OneDrive, Bing Search and Customer Experience Improvement Program, it is OK.
– DOZENS of Registry fixes to make it work like the way I want – more like Windows XP Professional and Windows 7 so Windows 8.1 is now a pleasant and stable experience!!
– Media Center is missing but Kodi is better. Between Kodi and its addons you can do everything.
– Aero Glass project is there if you miss Aero. Personally I don’t miss Aero’s transparencies any more. I prefer the theme above that I linked to. From a usability perspective, I find the Windows 8 theme is uglier compared to Windows 7 but the visual cues that help usability are better. For example, it is easier to tell the active window due to the use of solid colors in the title bar compared to transparencies. The baby blue selection color in context menus is also more visible in the Windows 8 theme vs Windows 7.
– Vastly superior virtual machine performance as a guest OS. I would like to stress this especially. Windows 7 and Windows 10 perform abysmally on my host running VirtualBox, Windows 8.1 performs extremely well.
So in general, I prefer Windows 8.1 over 7 because of better DPI scaling, better support of newer hardware technologies like Bluetooth low energy, NVM Express SSD TRIM, USB 3.0, Miracast, performance improvements to I/O. Windows 7 is still excellent but on a high res display, the DPI scaling isn’t up to it, USB and SSD I/O performance is worse, latest Bluetooth peripherals and wireless displays don’t work.
Windows 10, I am finding is just fluff and gimmickry and lots of annoyances which are hard to disable or impossible. It has some core/under the hood improvements but 8.1 has most of them too minus the silly and getting-in-the-way stuff which is essential for a serious workstation class OS. I don’t find the silly stuff like Cortana and all the dumbed down Metro UI forced on me useful at all.
1. Network File System (Enterprise-only) and Win Media Centre (Pro-only)
So you can’t have them both at the same time on W8. W7Ultimate wins because it has both.
2. Start menu
I have over hundreds of things (programs/games) installed. Digging for them is not the solution. Nor having another background process for a third party Start button which also have the “most used” list broken.
3. Disabling desktop composition (Aero) without breaking the Windows
On W7 I can simply apply W7Classic or Basic and I’m done. DWM.exe renders useless and I can close it. Things are different on 8. Why I need that? Welp I get more precision on my mouse when I need it (in Photoshop, for instance).
4. Shadow Copy (Last version..) tab is gone is W8. Very useful when editing a document and saving it every 5 minutes. It’s back in W10 though.
5. Broken ClearType. Try it on 7 vs 8/10, you’ll see the difference.
6. Broken intrnal clock on 8. Probably they fixed that by now, probably. (look on YouTube, there’s a video about it).
7. 125 Hz polling rate limitation. Some people reported it as fixed, some don’t.
8. Looks ugly. Yeah, I prefer glass over flat nonsense.
9. Useless BSoD. At least on 7 I get to recognise the file of the driver which game me the error. If it’s “nv…” then it’s the graphics one, etc..
10. 7 is the last non “connected” version of Windows. The “cloud” word gives no results to any search.
11 [extra] It just works. Why do I need third party programs to fix broken things when I can have the real deal, perfectly working? o.O Seems like doing a lot of work for nothing in return.
Your first three issues are basically just drivers which should be available from manufacturer’s device. Allways use them, even if Windows has some that are compatible anyway.
I don’t know about VM’s. 7 has Hyper-V as well though. I personally use VMWare and on my PC with a 3770k and 32GB or RAM I can easily host two OS’es (8.1 and 10) with zero performance hit in my daily tasks (given that you disable update checking and other maintainance tasks on those VM’s)
In terms of benchmarking (I did that too, with STALKER Call Of Pripyat, METRO 2033 / Last Light and Tomb Raider 2013. 7 won in all of them, a small win, they were close enough, but still always won.
xpclient,
Well we clearly have different ideas on the OS aspect :) I like a small ffotprint, my Win7 boots with 30-something processes only. I don’t like patching thing , I’d have to do it for Explorer, Task manager (always replaced with Process Explorer), Msconfig (how do I disable a process from booting up once I replace W8 task manager?), you name it. Too much, too complex, and sooner or later something will break. Even now I still have to restart Explorer like once a day due to a bug which, I assume the current microsoft developers are not capable of fixing it, because it’s still present in 10 as well.
StartIsBack and ClassicShell, both have this broken “recently used programs” issue. In the same manner. Sometimes the list is updates on spot, some other times it’s delayed, with like a minute or so, and most of the times not updated at all.
As for AIMP, VLC, Firefox, etc, well I’m trading the internal process for a new one. I’m not stacking them ;) With the start menu replacement it’s a new one.
Clear type mostly throughout Windows UI, not browser’s canvas, thankfully. You can even easier spot this by comparing any of the Office 2010 program to its counterpart from Word 2013 or 2016. There’s many complaints about this, even on their forums. I’ll again blame the incompetence of their developers for breaking something that worked and not being able to fix it back.
Normal mice, USB. I rember I noticed this myself while moving a window on the screen, it feels way less smooth than on 7.
A quick search for “bluetooth le windows 7” shows many people asking how to get it working and also many ohers which have managed to do so. It’s a driver thing. Native or not – well you’re not using the native graphics driver, do you? You always get the one from Nvidia/AMD/Intel ;) Same for audio and so on..
And still the main issue is present. No possibility to disable desktop composition, which makes the mouse signifficantly less responsive.
And these are my issues. I could go on with the UAC related ones – once completely disabled (via registry) the “modern apps” stop working. Now the fun part begins when you try to create a new windows profile. Instead of CPanel, the Settings modern will pop up, but with a message telling you that it can not work while UAC is off.
1. NFS Server – true but a better third party solution must exist? Unix subsystem and NFS vanished from 8.1, only there in 8 Enterprise. You can run Kodi on Enterprise. :)
2. “Most used” list broken in which Start menu? If you’re referring to Classic Shell, its developer is very responsive to feedback and immediately implements any fixes or changes if it’s broken. But the most used list data is based on Windows UserAssist algorithm which changed in Windows 8 vs 7. Might be “broken” because of that, in that case the Start Menu can’t do anything. Also, what’s the big deal with running an extra process for a Start menu? Not everyone uses IE, Explorer or Windows Media Player right? They use alternate browsers, file managers and media players which use more resources? It’s the same for the Start menu. :)
4. Shadow Copy is not back in Windows 10. MS deceived everyone by putting back a Previous Versions tab but it is now based on File History, not Shadow Copy. File History does not use Shadow Copies. :(
5. Broken ClearType where? In the main Windows UI? In Explorer? In web browsers?
7. Is this the PS/2 mouse polling rate you are referring to?
9. BSoD can be reverted to the useful one using a Registry tweak :)
10. Cloud shit can be disabled using Group Policy in 8.1 and stays disabled, but not 10. I can’t stand it either :)
There are no drivers for Bluetooth LE or UASP for Windows 7 except for very limited hardware. There is much more robust support for these technologies in Windows 8.1.
M$ sure does want people to start useing linux or osx which is just as terrible if not worse with the shenanigans. Sounds to me like the only reason this was reversed is because Intel and hardware manufacturers said wtf and decided to flip the bill so M$ really could not argue at that point. Never seen a company with such a huge market share doing everything possible to put its self out of business.
My guess is that it’s because lots of businesses have no interest in “upgrading” to Windows 10 in the near future, and OEMs realize that they are going to lose a lot of sales of new hardware if Windows 7, and maybe Windows 8.1, are not supported on Skylake through end of life. (I was told straight out by computer support staff at a large medical research facility that a lot of the software the institution uses simply doesn’t work past Windows 7 and that they’re nowhere close to being ready to “upgrade” their users.) You know that big dip in traditional desktop and laptop computer sales everyone’s been talking about for a while? And how Intel has slowed down its development schedule? I have a hunch it’s not just because “everyone is using tablets and smartphones instead.” I suspect it also correlates pretty closely with the introduction of Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10.
As for me personally as a Windows 7 user, I’m still recovering from GWX PTSD — “Get Windows 10” Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder — and am gradually lowering my personal alert level from hyper-vigilant to merely vigilant. I’m still vetting every single update Microsoft proposes, but the night sweats have stopped. ;-) I’m fine sticking with Windows 7 for now, but if a bad Windows update slips past me and my awesome clone/backup strategy and borks my system or the hardware simply craps out and I need to get a new machine, that strikes me as a good time to move to Linux.
What about 8.0? I don’t want the spyware that the 8.1 patch introduces, and 7.x is crap compared with Windows 8.
Its the other way around, 8.x is crap compared to 7…. unless you have a phablet.
@ Guest703
Win 7 = crap. Pardon ! Perhaps it is because you can not leave sticky finger marks on the screen as you can with a Win 8 touch screen.
Reference Win 8.1 spying; did you not read ANY of the articles on Ghacks about blocking telemetry / spyware which Martin has blogged for the last year or so ? !
@Gary D
Windows 7 supports touch screen. My mate had an AIO with touch screen so….that’s a bad reason to say it’s better.
But over-all performance and bugs, Windows 7 has had better compared to Windows 8/8.1
Windows 8.0 is officially unsupported by Microsoft and to me Windows 7 is way better than Windows 8/8.1 ever drempt of being.
@ George
No Windows 8.0 was officially dropped from support earlier this year.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?alpha=windows%208
“Customers have 24 months to move to Windows 8.1 after General Availability in order to remain supported.”
I don’t think 8.0 is unsupported, it shares the same “end of support” dates as 8.1.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet
@ Liv
“Windows 7 is way better than Windows 8/8.1 ever dreamt of being”
Agreed with 5 up votes for you :-)
Someone on here once said Skylake has some kind of badness built-in, that you wouldn’t really want given the choice. Anyone know the tinfoil disadvantages of Skylake?
Yeah, Intel CPUs in general have all sorts of things snuck in them, but I don’t what what bad thing was introduced in Skylake though. That’s why I just stick with AMD.
No USB 3 drivers in Win7/Win7SP1, so it’s still awkward to install on USB3-only devices with no CD/DVD drives, such as newish Skylake hardware.
You can integrate USB 3 drivers into an ISO of windows 7. I used MSMG ToolKit to do this, made an ISO of that and then used Rufus to put it on a USB stick.
Thanks Martin! Seams I am actually seeing it in action. I just posted this on MDL forum, with almost no good replies:
“Hi Folks,
I have Windows 10 on my main NVMe SSD, but I also have a working SATA SSD which I want to install Windows 7 on it and sometime use as a secondary OS.
I applied a fully updated Windows 7 install.wim to a primary partition on the SATA SSD and also added the boot files:
dism /apply-image /imagefile:X:\install.wim /index:1 /Applydir:I:\
bcdboot.exe” I:\Windows /s I: /f BIOS
Now the problem. When I boot to the SATA SSD for the first time, it sticks on 69% when recognising my devices. I even disconnected any external devices, graphics card, wireless adapter, etc. Nothing helped. I want Windows 7!
Using an ASUS Z170-PRO motherboard with the latest BIOS, Intel Core i7-6700K CPU, 16 GB Kingston HyperX Savage 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400 C9 memory, and an EVGA GeForce GTX 970 FTW GAMING ACX 2.0 graphics card. The NVMe is a Samsung 512GB 950 Pro M.2 NVMe Internal SSD. (Windows 10).
I am also using an OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SATA III SSD for my Windows 7 installation. I can install Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 on the SATA SSD and boot to it, with all my devices connected without any issue.
So any idea about why Windows 7 setup cannot continue after applying install.wim and rebooting? I did install Windows 7 in the same way on lots of other computers without any problem.
Thanks so much for any possible help.”
So… Maybe M$ do not want us to install Windows 7 on Skylake systems after all…
> Maybe MS do not want us to install Windows 7 on Skylake systems after all…
Or could it be because Windows 7 is an ancient operating system and doesn’t include NVMe SSD support out-of-the-box? Have you integrated the KB2990941 hotfix into your install.wim?
Maybe it’s just me, but if you want to use the latest hardware it makes sense to use the latest OS.