Trick Windows Update the Windows version?

ahuckphin · May 28, 2022

For example, 1 HP laptop model 14-bs077tx. However problem not limited to just this particular laptop model.

I experimented with the success rate of Windows Update to automatically install drivers after a fresh install. With Windows 1803, Windows Update was successful in clearing all yellow triangles with exclamation marks from device manager. However with Windows 20H2, I had to manually find drivers from HP's website to clear all yellow triangles with exclamation marks from device manager since Windows Update was unable to do so.

Can I like edit some registry to trick Windows Update into thinking that's it's an older version of Windows?

I feel like this will have a secondary benefit. Which is that sometimes, drivers downloaded from manufacturers website will fail to install due to unsupported OS because OS is to new.

Eigenvektor · May 28, 2022

8 minutes ago, ahuckphin said:

Can I like edit some registry to trick Windows Update into thinking that's it's an older version of Windows?

This would like cause more harm than good. If a newer Windows version no longer installs these drivers, it's either because those drivers were faulty somehow or they don't support the newer Windows version.

If you trick apps or drivers to think they are running on an older version, they might install, but that will just cause issues down the road. If a program no longer supports a newer version, it's not just because of the version number. It's because it expects Windows to behave in a certain way and the newer version no longer does (hence, why it is now incompatible).

If software detects it is running on e.g. 1809, it might expect certain APIs to be present or respond in certain ways and those APIs are either no longer there or their response is now different. This will likely cause the program to malfunction, crash or worst case render your Windows installation itself unstable.

Mark Kaine · May 28, 2022

12 hours ago, ahuckphin said:

With Windows 1803, Windows Update was successful in clearing all yellow triangles

Same.

12 hours ago, ahuckphin said:

However with Windows 20H2, I had to manually find drivers

For me anything above 1803 runs like shit (on desktop btw, my "main laptop " somehow manages to run 1809 successfully, but nothing beyond that...)

12 hours ago, ahuckphin said:

Can I like edit some registry to trick Windows Update into thinking that's it's an older version of Windows?

Why do you want to do that? Unclear to me what would be the purpose of this, as said already this would likely just give you huge issues because version numbers, etc, wouldnt be correct anymore.

GoodBytes · May 29, 2022

So, something that most people don't know is that during Windows 10 life Microsoft changed the supported hardware. They are many things that has happened, mainly, 3 things:

The core side of things were changed over time. Switching from the traditional NT layout to "OneCore" a component based architecture allowing Microsoft to have 1 OS for PC, XBox, Surface Hub, and anything else in the future, and just have the GUI and other higher layer of the OS to change/adapt for the device the OS runs on. Thus has cost an increase in resources.
Security improvements which costs performance reduction.
Microsoft splitting services that used to be regrouped into 1. So each service is its own process. That is why there is a huge list of svchost.exe in Task Manager. This adds more work on the CPU and consumes a bit more RAM than before. The upside is that if a service crashes, it won't crash/break other unrelated things, making troubleshooting harder, and also boost security (a flaw in 1 security service won't open the door to access another service loaded in the same process. They are locked to current process only)

All in all, drivers needs to support newer version release of Windows 10, and old and/or weak systems runs slower.

This is why some people never got the update to the newer version of Windows 10. So, yes you can force it, and it might make the system use generic drivers, and that might be ok with you. But at the end of the day, support is dropping.

In your case, probably HP website drivers are outdated, as probably by now it out of HP support. You might find newer drivers from the manufacturer of the hardware website (Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Realtek, etc.)

ahuckphin · July 20, 2022

On 5/29/2022 at 10:21 PM, GoodBytes said:

This is why some people never got the update to the newer version of Windows 10. So, yes you can force it, and it might make the system use generic drivers, and that might be ok with you. But at the end of the day, support is dropping.

Since older versions of Windows 10 are unsupported, like 1803 for example, to prevent Windows Update from updating the version, do people just disable Windows Update through Services?