A year and a half ago, Microsoft officially stopped supporting the operating system Windows 7. Now it became known that Microsoft will no longer publish drivers for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2 in Windows Update.
The termination of the publication of drivers lies in the fact that on May 9, the SHA-1 certificates expired, which Microsoft will no longer use. “Due to discontinued support and expiration of SHA-1 certificates, partners using the Microsoft Trusted Root Program might publish incompatible SHA-2 signed drivers for Windows and Windows Server devices that are not patched. This can result in degraded functionality and longer loading times for devices. The reason for the performance degradation is that unpatched systems will experience code integrity failures when processing an SHA-2 signed driver, ”Microsoft said in a statement.
To minimize the potential negative impact of these incompatibilities, Microsoft has stopped publishing SHA-2 signed drivers for these platform versions on Windows Update on June 17. Additionally, extended support for Windows 7 ended on January 14, 2020. However, the source also notes that organizations that continue to use outdated OS versions and receive Extended Security Updates (ESUs) will still deploy drivers to managed devices using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS).