Microsoft Quietly Kills Windows 7 Support For Non-SSE2 CPUs

Microsoft Quietly Kills Windows 7 Support For Non-SSE2 CPUs

Earlier this year, Microsoft pushed out an update for Windows 7 that, when installed, would cause systems running CPUs without SSE2 support to blue screen. The company said it was “working on a resolution” however, a few months later, it appears that resolution is to “buy a new PC”.

Martin Brinkmann over at gHacks decided to do some digging, after the notice disappeared from Microsoft’s most recent patch KB.

In the notice, Microsoft said it was “working on a resolution” and would “provide an update in an upcoming release”.

It seems the company decided it was easier to just drop support for non-SSE2 chips instead, going by a KB article dated May 8:

Symptom: A stop error occurs on computers that don’t support Streaming Single Instructions Multiple Data (SIMD) Extensions 2 (SSE2).

Workaround: Upgrade your machines with a processor that supports SSE2 or virtualize those machines.

That’s quite the workaround.

But let’s be honest for a minute: who does this impact exactly? Probably no one you know. Or anyone the people you don’t know know.

To be specific, you’d have be rocking a Pentium 3 or Athlon XP, the last mainstream processors lacking SSE2. Everything from the Pentium 4 and Athlon X2 up is right as rain.

Still, Microsoft should probably update the system requirements for Windows 7… just in case.

[Microsoft, via gHacks]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.