Microsoft Botches Up UEFI Support for Windows 7 on ASUS Motherboards

[Parn]

i personally think its just a ploy to push people to windows 10, if the pop ups weren't enough. this, which probably is the first of many to hit the older operating systems will try and push people to windows 10. nice one microsoft, just my 2cents

Agreed. In fact this could have been a joint venture between M$ and Asus to give a hard push on W10 to OEM PCs. Evil to say the least...

 

[AsRock]

This is easily fixable by a bios setting. The definition of "brick" must've changed while I wasn't looking...

News = "DRAMA", you know it's all about it, it's annoying yes i know as if you want some drama life or watching TV just does that.\

At least the word Brick(ed) isn't in the title , but maybe some of these custom 3rd party company's block you from changing any thing like this.

 

[Solidstate89]

It is no less secure than W10, despite the fear mongering by Microsoft and their lackies.

It is objectively less secure than both Windows 8 and Windows 10, just like Windows 7 is objectively more secure than Windows Vista or Windows XP.

Your "belief" doesn't change reality.

 

[laszlo]

M$ ............

 

[WaroDaBeast]

It is objectively less secure than both Windows 8 and Windows 10, just like Windows 7 is objectively more secure than Windows Vista or Windows XP.

Your "belief" doesn't change reality.

How is Windows 7 less secure?

 

[R-T-B]

How is Windows 7 less secure?

It isn't. Insecurity comes with lack of support. Windows 7 is still supported even on Skylake. It's less MODERN, but I think that one really isn't up for much debate.

News = "DRAMA", you know it's all about it, it's annoying yes i know as if you want some drama life or watching TV just does that.\

You know, I worked in a college newspaper for a bit that taught us the exact opposite. They taught us what once would've been called "good journalism." Sad to see the real world doesn't use that anymore.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Windows is only as secure as the users skill level working with windows.

IMO win7 is more secure than win 10, just look at all the privacy settings and what gets sent to MS that they dont really need to have to begin with. Security includes Privacy protection and Win 7 does a better job by not having all the same "doors" as Win 10 does

 

[huguberhart]

Windows is only as secure as the users skill level working with windows.

IMO win7 is more secure than win 10, just look at all the privacy settings and what gets sent to MS that they dont really need to have to begin with. Security includes Privacy protection and Win 7 does a better job by not having all the same "doors" as Win 10 does

Microsoft is collecting data from Windows 7 systems too.

 

[WaroDaBeast]

Microsoft is collecting data from Windows 7 systems too.

That's true... I uninstalled all those pesky "telemetry" KB's at once when I found out about them. That said, MS went way, way farther with Windows 10. So far, I don't think you can compare user data collection between bother OSes.

[EDIT] Excuse my French (bad English).

 

[MrGenius]

Now this is just speculation. But I have some reason to believe that W10 somehow messed the BIOS on my MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming quite a while back. Like around 6 months or so ago. One day I went to do some final tweaking of my OC settings. I'd been fiddling with it for days prior. But that day it all the sudden went completely fucky on me. I had major problems just getting the BIOS reset and stabilized with any but the default settings. I finally figured out a work around on my own through trial and error. But it took days of persistent trials and errors. THE BIGGEST nightmare I've ever had to deal with mobo wise. I was ready to trash it and buy a new one. But I finally got it close enough that I could do the rest of the OC/voltage settings in Windows(MSI Control Center). There's really just a few settings I could not make stick in the BIOS not matter what I did. The CPU PLL (V) and a few DRAM timings. So every time I reboot I have to load an OC profile and DRAM timing profile in CC. No biggie. And other than that everything was able to be set where I wanted it in the BIOS.

Now this discussion got me wondering even more if what I've got going on really could be related to W10 after all. I've already concluded it's a W10 thing. And it'd be pretty hard to convince me otherwise. This discussion just confirms it as far as I care. BTW my mobo is dual BIOS. And neither BIOS behaves any differently. I've flashed them both with BIOSs found on MSI's site. No change. Trust me, I've done every god damn thing that can be done besides uninstalling W10 and trying another OS. Which I'm not going to bother with. Because it works well enough for the moment. One more thing that just got brought to my attention though is Click BIOS II no longer works. It won't run at all now. I haven't messed with it in the last ~6 months. But a few days ago I tried it to see where I was at. And now it's totally broke too. Which probably is a good thing. Less temptation to fiddle with my BIOS. Which is likely to end in disaster no matter what I do.

Whatever it is, it ain't good. And I've been staying the hell away from my BIOS for the time being. Until I get a new mobo that is.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Now this is just speculation. But I have some reason to believe that W10 somehow messed the BIOS on my MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming quite a while back. Like around 6 months or so ago. One day I went to do some final tweaking of my OC settings. I'd been fiddling with it for days prior. But that day it all the sudden went completely fucky on me. I had major problems just getting the BIOS reset and stabilized with any but the default settings. I finally figured out a work around on my own through trial and error. But it took days of persistent trials and errors. THE BIGGEST nightmare I've ever had to deal with mobo wise. I was ready to trash it and buy a new one. But I finally got it close enough that I could do the rest of the OC/voltage settings in Windows(MSI Control Center). There's really just a few settings I could not make stick in the BIOS not matter what I did. The CPU PLL (V) and a few DRAM timings. So every time I reboot I have to load an OC profile and DRAM timing profile in CC. No biggie. And other than that everything was able to be set where I wanted it in the BIOS.

Now this discussion got me wondering even more if what I've got going on really could be related to W10 after all. I've already concluded it's a W10 thing. And it'd be pretty hard to convince me otherwise. This discussion just confirms it as far as I care. BTW my mobo is dual BIOS. And neither BIOS behaves any differently. I've flashed them both with BIOSs found on MSI's site. No change. Trust me, I've done every god damn thing that can be done besides uninstalling W10 and trying another OS. Which I'm not going to bother with. Because it works well enough for the moment. One more thing that just got brought to my attention though is Click BIOS II no longer works. It won't run at all now. I haven't messed with it in the last ~6 months. But a few days ago I tried it to see where I was at. And now it's totally broke too. Which probably is a good thing. Less temptation to fiddle with my BIOS. Which is likely to end in disaster no matter what I do.

Whatever it is, it ain't good. And I've been staying the hell away from my BIOS for the time being. Until I get a new mobo that is.

Well you could try this: Buy a cheap hard drive, swap it out for your current windows drive and install xp/7 or even 8 (if you're feeling frisky).

 

[Caring1]

Your "belief" doesn't change reality.

I reject your reality, and insert my own

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

I reject your reality, and insert my own

*sharp whistle* Hey buddy, back of the line for reality checks!

 

[newtekie1]

This is easily fixable by a bios setting. The definition of "brick" must've changed while I wasn't looking...

The issue is a lot of OEM machines, like both of my ASUS laptops, don't have the option to turn off secure boot.

Because unlike XP, there is nothing wrong with W7, Microsoft continues to churn out new products to keep consumers paying.
I continue to use W7 because I can control updates, without a hack, everything works and works well.
It is no less secure than W10, despite the fear mongering by Microsoft and their lackies.

Win7 is less secure. It's lack of secure boot support right there makes it less secure. Plus when you install it, it sets the drive to MBR, which is very susceptible to MBR viruses. It is very easy to overwrite the MBR boot track with a virus. Win8/10 defaults to GPT which isn't nearly as easy for a virus to change the boot track on.

Plus bitlocker is better on Win10.

 

[WaroDaBeast]

The issue is a lot of OEM machines, like both of my ASUS laptops, don't have the option to turn off secure boot.



Win7 is less secure. It's lack of secure boot support right there makes it less secure. Plus when you install it, it sets the drive to MBR, which is very susceptible to MBR viruses. It is very easy to overwrite the MBR boot track with a virus. Win8/10 defaults to GPT which isn't nearly as easy for a virus to change the boot track on.

Plus bitlocker is better on Win10.

What if I'm not using Windows? Do you think Secure Boot would be that crucial in terms of security?

 

[newtekie1]

What if I'm not using Windows? Do you think Secure Boot would be that crucial in terms of security?

I don't think it is crucial for security in any scenario, but it is a feature that improves security.

That is why the major Linux distros are starting to support it too. Ubuntu, for example, has supported secure boot since I believe 12.04.

 

[Solidstate89]

How is Windows 7 less secure?

• It lacks SecureBoot - making it impossible to flesh out a rootkit or something that attacks the boot order. Why this bug even exists in the first place I can't say, but SecureBoot can be used by either Windows or a modern Linux Distro, and Windows 7 doesn't support it.
• To go even further than SecureBoot, if you have a Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 system that utilizes a TPM (1.2 or 2.0, doesn't matter) it uses an even more secured version called Timed Boot. This is what I use on my desktop at home.
  
• There is no HEASLR support, only ASLR, making 64-bit applications inherently less secure in Windows 7 than Windows 10 as they lack a higher entropy randomization.
  
• The WDDM graphics drivers in Windows 10 (WDDM 2.x) are both more performant, and more secure than the WDDM 1.x driver model in Windows 7
• In both Windows 8 and Windows 10 there is a new - and more isolated/secure - Integrity Level available that isn't available in Windows 7. It's even available to be used by Win32 applications, not just UWP apps. IE11 used it before it was replaced by Edge for example. Integrity Levels are what Microsoft refers to as "sandboxing" and Chrome for example runs in a "Low" integrity level. The additional security feature in Windows 8 and Windows 10 is known as "App" level, but don't let the name confuse you. Even a Win32 "desktop" application can utilize it if it wants. It doesn't need to use the UWP framework.
  
• Speaking of UWP framework, it in and of itself provides a great security barrier. I use the Foxit PDF viewer UWP app because literally everything is sandboxed about it. It can't touch the registry, it can't touch the disk where it's not allowed, it can't interact with other applications, it can't auto-elevate itself. This provides some detriment to high-performant applications like games, but that's not what I'm referring to here.
• The additional of Control Flow Guard for applications written in Visual Studio 2015 or above is only available in operating systems more modern than Windows 7.
• The UAC is actually improved, as the AMSI engine scans every program that triggers a UAC elevation prompt for known malware.
• There's also a whole host of Enterprise security improvements that sadly are unavailable to us private users (even with Windows 10 Pro) like Device Guard that adds some really neat security checks that are isolated from the system using Hyper-V to virtualize its existence to prevent malware from abusing it.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Win8/10 defaults to GPT which isn't nearly as easy for a virus to change the boot track on.

How does this happen? All of my 8/10 installs have defaulted to MBR. If there is a secret method to ensure it's automatic, I'd love to know.

 

[newtekie1]

How does this happen? All of my 8/10 installs have defaulted to MBR. If there is a secret method to ensure it's automatic, I'd love to know.

If you run a clean command on the drive from diskpart before installing Windows, Win10 and 8.1(not sure on 8) will automatically initialize the drive as GPT, or at least they have for me.

 

[Fx]

That's true... I uninstalled all those pesky "telemetry" KB's at once when I found out about them. That said, MS went way, way farther with Windows 10. So far, I don't think you can compare user data collection between bother OSes.
[EDIT] Excuse my French (bad English).

Thank you for bringing this to light. I'll be uninstalling these when I get home from work.

As far as gaming, I think I'll build a W10 rig just for that and either keep my Win7 just for every day use or switch to Linux Mint.

 

[R-T-B]

If you run a clean command on the drive from diskpart before installing Windows, Win10 and 8.1(not sure on 8) will automatically initialize the drive as GPT, or at least they have for me.

IF you booted from EFI mode mind you.

 

[Temporalwar]

I wish Microsoft would make a windows 8/10 UEFI support windows 7 with updated media etc