A developer has found a way to make the latest generation AMD and Intel CPUs run under Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. Microsoft previously announced that the latest generation AMD and Intel CPUs such as Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Ryzen processors would only be officially supported in Windows 10.
Users who purchase a new CPU and are running older Windows versions, including the popular Windows 7 which powers about 50% of all computers, would normally be required to update to Windows 10.
Thanks to a developer called zeffy it's now possible to run a script that patches Windows 7 and/or Windows 8.1 can also be run on Kaby Lake and AMD Ryzen CPUs. Microsoft has added code to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. that checks whether the system runs on a 'supported CPU' during Windows Update. The patch from zeffy will make sure that this check always returns 'true' .
The developer warns that his patch "will not magically make updates work that are truly incompatible with next-gen CPUs", and thus that Microsoft could eventually block his patch method.
