Microsoft Is Deleting Old Drivers From Windows Update (nerds.xyz) 62
BrianFagioli writes: In a move that could quietly wreak havoc across the Windows ecosystem, Microsoft is purging outdated drivers from Windows Update. The company claims it is doing this for security and reliability, but the result might be broken hardware for users who rely on legacy devices.
If you're using older peripherals or custom-built PCs, you could soon find yourself hunting for drivers that have vanished into the digital abyss. This initiative, buried in a low-profile blog post, is part of Microsoft's new cleanup program. The first wave targets legacy drivers that already have newer replacements available. But the real kicker is that Microsoft isn't warning individual users about which drivers are going away.
If you're using older peripherals or custom-built PCs, you could soon find yourself hunting for drivers that have vanished into the digital abyss. This initiative, buried in a low-profile blog post, is part of Microsoft's new cleanup program. The first wave targets legacy drivers that already have newer replacements available. But the real kicker is that Microsoft isn't warning individual users about which drivers are going away.
Can you have quiet chaos? (Score:2)
Does the author mean to say that there will be quiet chaos, or do they mean to say that by making a quiet move, chaos will ensue?
Personally I like the concept of quiet chaos. Also would make a great metal band name.
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No need to be outraged yet (Score:5, Informative)
From MS, not the fake news site: "The first phase targets legacy drivers that have newer replacements already on Windows Update."
No details on future phases, but this seems quite reasonable.
Re:No need to be outraged yet (Score:4, Informative)
Does MS print out a list of deleted or replaced drivers?
Then at least you were to start looking when something fails to work.
I have less than fond memories of Windows 10 updates repeatedly deleting my scanner driver. And the approved replacement didn't work.
Re: No need to be outraged yet (Score:3)
How old was it? Because I have an old display, a samsung 22", and it works flawlessly. What does the driver do anyway? Just use "generic pnp display" and it should work.
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Yeah, I have a couple of expensive calibrated displays, and they work fine at full resolution over DisplayPort/Thunderbolt (3840x1920 60Hz) with the generic drivers. The drivers just allow you to switch colour profiles and control brightness/contrast/etc. over USB.
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I've never had a monitor that required specific drivers. Even the old EDTV that I have works just fine with no special drivers. Runs at a weird 1440x900 resolution.
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"Runs at a weird 1440x900 resolution"
why is that weird? We had a bunch of different brand laptops at work some years ago for which that was the preferred resolution
Re: No need to be outraged yet (Score:2)
Re:No need to be outraged yet (Score:4, Informative)
"eliminating Prolific drivers"
if you mean USB-to-serial, there was a point I was ready to go Luigi on Nadella. Our onsite & med eng teams who maintain a large number of legacy devices that can't easily be replaced have struggled to find & keep adapters working especially when their laptops get replaced every few years.
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"eliminating Prolific drivers" if you mean USB-to-serial, there was a point I was ready to go Luigi on Nadella. Our onsite & med eng teams who maintain a large number of legacy devices that can't easily be replaced have struggled to find & keep adapters working especially when their laptops get replaced every few years.
Yes - Holy crap - your situation was definitely a lot worse - and more important than my struggles with the elimination of those drivers.
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the teams recently had to go manually update the firmware on over 3000 perfusion pumps.
it's no exaggeration to say that any failure to do so, for whatever reason is life threatening.
we intend to replace them with ones that can be managed over the network but these old ones have been mechanically rock-solid for over 15 years & the replacements would be at least $2k each.
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Not sure why the parent is marked troll. The deprecation of the Prolific USB-serial chipset affected thousands of embedded systems. Expensive lab equipment turned into e-waste by Microsoft. Though of course the admins of said equipment should also maintain sensible backup images for known-good configuration of their hardware.
Re:No need to be outraged yet (Score:4, Informative)
From MS, not the fake news site: "The first phase targets legacy drivers that have newer replacements already on Windows Update."
No details on future phases, but this seems quite reasonable.
This would be quite the change. I've lived through drivers that have been removed, rendering printers, scanners, and dongles that have been wiped out, with nothing to replace them - So unless Microsoft has had a complete about face, they'll just remove them, and we'll live with whatever results they say we'll live with.
So I'll believe nothing is removed without a replacement when I see it.
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From MS, not the fake news site: "The first phase targets legacy drivers that have newer replacements already on Windows Update."
Which is noted in TFS, TFA, from the original MS blog, so it was reported accurately everywhere.
Re: No need to be outraged yet (Score:4, Informative)
And sometimes the newer replacements don't work as they should for certain hardware variants.
This means that people in need of older drivers where the creating company has abandoned them will have to resort to questionable sites with increased security risks.
Really funny when you try to keep alive older systems that are controlling advanced multimillion dollar equipment that's hard to replace.
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PREACH!
Scaremonger much? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're using older peripherals or custom-built PCs, you could soon find yourself hunting for drivers that have vanished into the digital abyss.
Or you can use the generic driver for the five minutes it will take to download it from the manufacturer or any number of mirror sites. Naturally the driver you have installed isn't going to just disappear and this only really affects people who are reinstalling Windows on an old PC; you're hardly likely to be building a new box from scratch using parts that are old enough to be affected by this. Realistically if you're the sort of person who builds their own you really aren't going to have any trouble find
Re:Scaremonger much? (Score:4, Interesting)
What does the hardware industry pay? (Score:2, Insightful)
First they make sure all people need to buy new PCs for Win 11, now they make sure that you won't get drivers for your old hardware.
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I spent a 20+ year career as a sysadmin/"windows janitor", and seeing now how more evil MS has become in the last few years, I'm so damn glad I moved my home systems over to Linux when I retired in 2010. MS has removed the gloves and is making no bones about f--king with those poor folks who, for whatever reason STILL uses anything from MS.. They have my pity..
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"new"
I'm not a fan of MSFT. I'm a Linux user. Hell, I'm even an admin on Linux.org. (It's the same username, so it's not like I'd be hiding very well.)
I say that just to demonstrate that I love me some Linux. (I used a lot of UNIX systems back in the day.)
But... TPM 2.0, which is the 'new' hardware requirement, was released in 2014. Sure, it took a couple of years for mass adoption, but the average desktop computer user replaces their system anywhere from 2 to 3 years or 5 to 8 years, depending on who you a
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And, no, they shouldn't still be supporting 32-bit computers.
I agree with that.. But as for hardware drivers: There are components which people can have purchased brand new a few years ago which are now "Unsupported" by the manufacturer, because the model was arbitrarily retired and a newer upgrade model was introduced with no actual improvements.
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I think you may be missing something. Though, it could be me...
The comment was saying that MSFT required 'new' hardware for Windows 11. That's specifically referring to the TPM 2.0 requirement. That's the only 'new' hardware requirement for Windows 11.
That's what I was responding to. TPM 2.0 has been out for years. It's hardly new technology at this point. Granted, some folks will still have older devices. But, the tech isn't new. It has been around for more than a decade. It's not dissimilar to dropping su
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I have a Linux laptop I often use that's from 2014. And it's not like I am using it because I can, but because it is still fine normal use. I have no idea what kind of TPM it has, but I am pretty sure one couldn't enjoy Windows 11 with it, probably not even Windows 10.
Someday I will use the 8 GB of RAM as excuse to buy a new one (even though RAM would be upgradable), but currently it runs fine. And that doesn't mean "It's still fine, because a new one is too expensive" but fine as in "Why should I upgrade a
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"Why should you upgrade?": I'm almost completely in agreement with you on this.
My only pushback is remembering the time I had to get data from a non-networked 1994 PC to a Windows 10 PC for an accountant friend, including a great deal of confidential client info. Fortunately, I had a USB 3.5" floppy disk drive. Sadly, that's the only method that worked. (One of these days I'm going to insist on a steak dinner for that miserable bobo work.) So my take is that decisions about upgrading systems need to take in
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You probably have TPM 1.0. Linux doesn't do much with it, but it can. Your keyring may be stored in TPM. If you regularly use passkeys, that too *can* be stored in the TPM (though most password managers just store it on the device locked through the keyring).
I'm not even a wee bit interested in Windows 11, but I hear about it a great deal. So, I sort of end up having to at least be familiar with the MSFT news. I have a lot of UNIX in my background and switched to Linux almost as soon as I could, just after
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First they make sure all people need to buy new PCs for Win 11, now they make sure that you won't get drivers for your old hardware.
And let us not forget - the biggest deprecation of all time was their work to get people to trash perfectly good, perfectly fast computers to go to W11. And driver destruction is par for the course.
I predict a little grumbling, then back the old "I cannot use any other OS than Windows!" excuse. So it's a little amusing to see the Windows users put up with anything Microsoft forces on them. I'll bet they'd all pay 100 dollars a month for Windows Ultra when they move the entire OS to SaaS.
Makes me appre
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First they make sure all people need to buy new PCs for Win 11, now they make sure that you won't get drivers for your old hardware.
Yeah.. Now we need some kind of software program that can Backup all installed drivers and provide a means to Install them or inject them into a new install of Windows. On old hardware you may have a working system now, but what if you need to reinstall it?
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Maybe one should always create a disk image of a fresh installation with all drivers installed.
Who in the world... (Score:2)
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is pulling their windows drivers from M$ as opposed to from the manufacturer of the hardware? For anyone not in the know, the manufacturer drivers tend to be better in most cases, there are some exceptions as always. That being said, you really should be installing the latest manufacturer driver if you want to be up-to-date, they don't always send new drivers to MS to be part of windows update so a lot of times you end up with some quazi generic drivers with a lot of features stripped out when you use the windows update drivers.
Can you find me a prolific chip driver? I can for Linux, haven't tried on MacOS, but a whole lot of devices I have are inoperative and will always be inoperative on Windows. Saddest one is a manufacturer that built a prolific chip into their SDR transceiver that Windows killed.
Note - there were counterfeit Prolific chips being put out by our friends in China. Apparently Microsoft decided that they should kill them all. On other OS' the counterfeit chips simply didn't work, so you knew you had a bad one.
Re: Who in the world... (Score:1)
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Their aupport page tells you to login with guest guest which works, I'd need to know exactly which of their chips you want a driver for but there are chips listed with a bunch if drivers link.
I tried all those - not certain why, but no worky. I'm not certain if windows itself is preventing it.
In Linux it is so easy. just enable the manufacturer and product number in terminal, and it goes out, grabs, and installs them. works for Prolific and FTDI, which replaced Prolific chips.
The interesting thing - at least to me - is absolutely ancient versions of USB-Serial adapters like the one that worked for my wife's Palm Pilot work just as well as the latest FTDI version - on Linux.
A more reasonable solution... (Score:1)
A more reasonable solution would be to move the ancient drivers out of Windows Updates and put them in a Microsoft-run legacy-driver-download web site where users would need to manually download the specific version of the driver that they want.
Why bother with the Microsoft-run web site for ancient code that only a few people will ever need? This gives users the assurance that you are downloading the real thing and not a trojanized version by a web site pretending to be an oh-so-helpful old-driver-download
Re: A more reasonable solution... (Score:2)
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I maintain a small 2TB home NAS just for this purpose. It contains ALL drivers I have ever used personally or professionally (since 1992) and all legacy software as well from the same time period forward. In 2019 I uploaded everything to archive.org so others would have access to them too.
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In 2019 I uploaded everything to archive.org so others would have access to them too.
You're doing the Lord's work, RitchCraft.
Re: A more reasonable solution... (Score:2)
That actually a great idea. I'm already saving all installed software, but I replace it when I buy a new computer. Never thought about uploading it to the archives.
Will encourage the scamware industry (Score:2, Interesting)
Not a problem! (Score:4, Funny)
Doesn't pass the smell test (Score:3, Interesting)
How is it a security vulnerability that a driver is available on Windows Update? Windows Update will only load the driver if the hardware is present and needs it. Those legacy outdated drivers available do not get magically loaded onto a machine.
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more on the reliability side (having an really BIG DB for updates is bad look at WSUS) / older drivers may not comply with newer requirements For updates to be hosted on windows update.
Re:Doesn't pass the smell test (Score:5, Informative)
Drivers have full access to the system. Some drivers are buggy and have flaws that make exploitation of the system easier.
Some drivers have been updated, and for some reason, Windows Update contains both versions instead of just the later release, so those are the first to be purged.
Second are likely drivers for stuff that have known issues or exploits - and you should go to the manufacturer to get updated drivers because they didn't submit later ones to Microsoft. Thus it would be better for Microsoft to not give you old outdated buggy drivers when there's a later one for download.
Re: Doesn't pass the smell test (Score:3)
And then there are the drivers that prevent you from running things like randomised memory locations, or DEP. It's not just the vulnerabilities in the drivers themselves, it's also that they're preventing mitigating measures.
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Some drivers have been updated, and for some reason, Windows Update contains both versions instead of just the later release, so those are the first to be purged.
And you've just demonstrated zero risk to the user. If you plug in a device Windows Update is not going to send them the outdated driver.
Second are likely drivers for stuff that have known issues or exploits
That is not up to MS to gate keep. Breaking hardware because of a vendor bug that *may* present a security risk is user hostile. Also can you cite a single case where a manufacturer has a history of publishing drivers via windows update but then decided to stop doing so leaving buggy drivers in place? This seems like not only a completely convoluted and made up scenario, b
i mean come on (Score:2)
of course they aren't warning people, if they did they'd have to hear about it and they don't give a FUCK
Ongoing (Score:2)
Opposite effect of that they intend. (Score:1)
"The company claims it is doing this for security and reliability". The trouble is, people will go looking elsewhere for those drivers, and download from untrusted sources, which is a bigger security risk. A better thing to do would be to make old driver downloads easier to obtain, with warnings about the specific security problems they might pose.
Simple solution (Score:1)
Turn off updates.
Children... (Score:2)
I'm still using my 25 year old Brother laser printer.
Now get off my lawn!
T
Always Block Drivers from M$ Update (Score:2)
We set GPO to block downloading drivers from M$ and get them from the manufacturer instead... Been bit too many times by bad drivers from M$ Update....
The whole point of this (Score:1)
is to make sure you throw hardware in the trash so you have to buy new hardware. The hardware companies want this and so does microsoft, less maintenance
Are you stupid? (Score:1)
Ask yourself this: do I still use windows, even though I know how horrible and invasive it is? If your answer is yes, then you are indeed stupid. Simple.