A few days ago, Microsoft has officially blocked updates for PCs running Windows 7 and 8.1 on the newest generation processors. This means that these systems will no longer get feature updates, hotfixes, or security patches. While this indeed is an inconvenience for those opting to run the older operating systems, a GitHub user has found a way around the hurdle, thus activating updates again.
The user, who goes by the name "zeffy", has tested four batch scripts after this month's Patch Tuesday. The files will patch Windows DLL files, which will then fool the system into thinking that the processors are still supported. The end result is that now delivery of updates to the formerly blocked PCs will continue unhindered.
According to the README file he has provided, Zeffy was able to create the patch by reverse engineering the KB4012218 update Microsoft has recently provided, and compared it to the ones that are already in his computer.
In his analysis, he found two culprits, "IsCPUSupported(void)" and "IsDeviceServiceable(void)". He found that these functions were responsible for triggering the block of updates in new processors. Zeffy's scripts modify these, by changing the functions' outputs to "1", meaning "supported CPU". Once done, he states that updates will be delivered again to older operating systems with modern CPUs.
Those who want to know more about how Zeffy created the patches, can go to his Github page, found at the source link. Of course, you can try it out for yourself, but since this is not an official workaround, do it at your own risk.
Source: GitHub via BleepingComputer
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