Everything wrong with Microsoft Corp.

[anon]

Good news: Microsoft finally fixed the Windows Update v6 site so that it no longer causes svchost.exe to hang and use 100% of the CPU for hours. In the past, the only options were waiting for who knows how long, installing patches manually via the Update Catalog, or trying your luck with some hotfixes.

Bad news: since last month or so, the POSReady 2009 update patches require a processor that supports SSE2 instructions, so if you have an Athlon XP or a pre-4 Pentium, no more updates for you.

Worse news: Windows 7 security patches will also require SSE2.

[anon]

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldne...08-00/?p=95395

For all the flak Microsoft gets, it's insane to which extents they have gone to ensure compatibility with "behind the scenes" work that the average user will never see or know about, of which this is just one small example. Some others include RADAR, DREDGE, Driver Verifier, shims, thunks, DirectX compatibility flags, UAC virtualization... because they know that if something worked before and doesn't now, people will blame the OS and not the program.

It's also regrettable how they've gone backwards in this regard with Windows 10 as a service, forced updates and minimal software testing.