Microsoft says older PCs will run noticeably slower when patched

[HEXUS]

Meltdown, Spectre patch impact will be greatest on pre-Skylake Windows 7 and 8 systems.

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[marshalex]

I'm waiting for the 'Don't forget AMD are also affected!' statement from the Intel PR department...

[Normanyakuza]

No way!! I dont want to suffer more longer loading time. T-T y u do dis Microsoft

[Millennium]

I mean, this is under the massive and hilarious assumption that these systems will ever actually be patched. I'm not holding out hope for my Core 2 Duo laptop (Dell), I'm very doubtful significant patches much before Z170 will be incoming.

So much useless hardware. Sigh.

[kalniel]

I mean, this is under the massive and hilarious assumption that these systems will ever actually be patched. I'm not holding out hope for my Core 2 Duo laptop (Dell), I'm very doubtful significant patches much before Z170 will be incoming.

So much useless hardware. Sigh.

That's a good point - I can't see manufacturer's releasing bios updates for old but otherwise perfectly working motherboards out there, so that's going to remain a massive vulnerability.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

OTH,MS might see a surge of people upgrading to Windows 10 - Christmas 2018 come early for them??

[3dcandy]

Do we not see a massive upsurge for AMD then as their cpu's are less affected?

[cheesemp]

Why does this feel like being forced to upgrade at virtual gun point? I've got a 3570k I cannot afford to replace this year (and to be honest its fine for all my usages but only just). Just hoping the slow down isn't too great in my usual scenarios... The alternative is being damn careful what I run but that is always risky... I wonder how hard they are looking for optimised fixes when they know you'll just buy a new intel/windows machine anyway.

[Saracen]

I mean, this is under the massive and hilarious assumption that these systems will ever actually be patched. I'm not holding out hope for my Core 2 Duo laptop (Dell), I'm very doubtful significant patches much before Z170 will be incoming.

So much useless hardware. Sigh.

Well, there is a case for asking yourself .... do your older systems need to be online?

Obviously, the answer depends on your needs and what older systems are used for. In my case, I have about a dozen older systems that don't need to be online, and so, aren't By which I mean, they're networked, by with no net gateway, no wifi, etc,

So the only way any hacker is going to exploit any CPU weakness on them is if he climbs through my office window with an ethernet cable.

Sure, this won't suit everybody, but if, like me, you drive a lot of older hardware, it sure beats spending thousands upgrading kit.

And, yes, I have machines that do need to be online. But most don't. Others will multiple machines may find similarly that some gain nothing, and risk much, by bring online. For instance, one way to ensure staff aren't wasting work time searching ebay, Twitteting or putting he company at risk by doing something naughty from work is by not giving them internet access unless their job needs it.

[Iota]

With Windows 8 and Windows 7 on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU), we expect most users to notice a decrease in system performance.

In other words this is Microsoft's subtle way of trying to get people to upgrade unless they want to see performance degradation. Or maybe I'm just getting cynical in my old age.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Well, there is a case for asking yourself .... do your older systems need to be online?

Obviously, the answer depends on your needs and what older systems are used for. In my case, I have about a dozen older systems that don't need to be online, and so, aren't By which I mean, they're networked, by with no net gateway, no wifi, etc,

So the only way any hacker is going to exploit any CPU weakness on them is if he climbs through my office window with an ethernet cable.

Sure, this won't suit everybody, but if, like me, you drive a lot of older hardware, it sure beats spending thousands upgrading kit.

And, yes, I have machines that do need to be online. But most don't. Others will multiple machines may find similarly that some gain nothing, and risk much, by bring online. For instance, one way to ensure staff aren't wasting work time searching ebay, Twitteting or putting he company at risk by doing something naughty from work is by not giving them internet access unless their job needs it.

What if some of our major systems are old though??

Did you see this:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/04/inte...ity-flaws.html

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in late November, Krzanich acquired and sold 644,135 shares at a weighted average price of $44.05 by exercising his options. Those options let him purchase the shares at prices between $12.985 and $26.795, significantly lower than where Intel was trading at the time.

He sold another 245,743 shares that he already owned at a weighted average of $44.55. That brought down the total number of shares he owns to 250,000 — which is the minimum number of shares that the CEO of Intel is required to own, according to a Motley Fool report. Krzanich sold all of those shares for a little over $39 million, apparently netting about $25 million.

The filing showed that the sales were part of a 10b5-1 plan, which was created on Oct. 30, just a month before Krzanich sold the shares. The 10b5-1 is a trading plan that company executives set up to sell stocks they own at a pre-determined time so that they are not accused of insider trading.

Its a bloody joke - the Intel CEO had nearly 1.15 million shares. Then he apparently instigated a "new plan" in 2H 2017 AFTER INTEL knew about the issue,to "automatically" sell around 80% of his shares to the minimum required level as CEO. Now as a result of the news,the stock price has gone down to the extend he roughly earned $1 million extra than if he held onto them now.

Except for the rest of us,even many with Haswell chips,we might not get the full updates to securely patch our systems and this is potential for performance drops too even when you do on newer systems.

[mers]

Well I'm not that bothered about a few seconds longer to boot , not that desperate. But if this a further attempt to push me to that garbage called Win10 they can stuff it where the sun don't shine. What with forced updates, privacy issues ( No you can't kill all of them ) , front end that looks like a bland kiddies phone etc, etc , bigger c*ck -up than Millenium edition in my book.

[Millennium]

I feel this is going to be as big an issue as US net neutrality, but it's going to be ignored because people .. err I dunno just seems only real IT pros will see the truth of this situation everyone else will just patch OS and live happily until Worm 4.0 comes out and owns half the planet in 6-18 months.

[peterb]

I mean, this is under the massive and hilarious assumption that these systems will ever actually be patched. I'm not holding out hope for my Core 2 Duo laptop (Dell), I'm very doubtful significant patches much before Z170 will be incoming.

So much useless hardware. Sigh.

It is a vulnerability, but it needs the malware to exploit it. Depending on what you use the machine for, your existing precautions may be entirely adequate. Obviously you need to carry out your own risk assessment based on your own use case, sensitivity of the data you are processing etc etc.

What if some of our major systems are old though??

Same applies - its a risk assessment and a decision based on whether the existing security is good enough for the data being processed, and whether that risk is justified over the decrease in processing speed. There is no right or wrong answer - each case has to be assessed on its merits.

[Millennium]

Ok I'll bite

1) yes the machines will be fine if left offline
2) yes you can never run any untrusted code on your online machine and you should be fine
3) risk assessment? Like 'can I run code I didn't write or read the source of' risk? I mean it's far out there, to be safe with an unpatched microcode, you've got as I understand it any code at all running in an interpreter / container like even JavaScript on websites able to exploit this errata(s). It *does* probably need another exploit to be widely deploy (don't do it) but I mean those kind of exploits do happen fairly regularly, like the recent NFS one or so many others.

I think you're security policy / position is all well and good but the actual CPU hardware is exploitable it comes to a point where you just say - not good enough, moving on (somehow).

[ET3D]

Here are instructions on how to uninstall updates. Don't know if this applies to this update, but I'm guessing that yes.