Sometimes you think something has
ended at last, only for that thing to have even the briefest last-minute
development that keeps it going for just a bit longer. Microsoft’s Windows 7
operating system has had a long and good product life, still being used around
the world even with the debut of its rather distant successor Windows 10 in
2015. The official support given to the OS by Microsoft has been gradually
phased out in recent years. Just this January 13, mainstream support for
Windows 7 definitively ended. Or it should have, if not for a certain bug that
Microsoft fixed after the support deadline.
The Verge tells us that just over two weeks following Microsoft
halting all software update support for their aged Windows 7 computer OS, they
suddenly went and issued a batch of security fixes for it. Ironically, these post-support
updates were to repair an unexpected display error caused by one of the final
official support packages for Win-7, designated KB4534310. According to
Microsoft, one of the details on this last fix has caused problems with
displaying wallpaper on the desktop. From their description, setting an image
as wallpaper with the stretch setting would cause the background to display as
black instead.
Specifically, only the “stretch”
display option for wallpapers seems to be affected by certain features of the
swan-song KB4534310 update, likely because of aspect ratio issues. If a
wallpaper display option is set to center, title, or even just a fill color,
there are no issues (since the image aspect ratio for the former two are not so
dramatically altered). The fact that the update-induced problem only became
apparent when mainstream support ended would have meant that Microsoft could
charge Win-7 users for getting it fixed, the same way they would be charging extended
security updates for stubborn Win-7 regulars.
Thankfully, Microsoft is a lot
more reasonable than expected and offered the bug fix for this issue free.
Essentially, what should have been part of the paid “extended security update”
packages is now available for all continuing users of Windows 7 and Windows
Server 2008 R2 SP1. That is very kind of them here, compared to how Microsoft
has caused the German government to cough up about $887,000 for extended
security updates for all their government-use PCs and devices that still use
Win-7, since a paid ESU package is $20 to $50 per unit, depending on the
computer being protected.
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