Has Microsoft nerffed Win 7 ?

I've looked at 2 Win 7 machines in the last week and both were unable to successfully perform updates for the system or Windows Defender. I saw on the MS site that defender no longer provides full protection under Win 7, but nothing about system updates.
 
I'm thinking they're actively trying to push people off the platform.

Mainstream support for Windows 7 ended January 15, 2015. You can still get some bug fixes and security patches under extended support until January 14, 2020.
 
Windows 7 uses Microsoft Security Essentials as its free from MS antivirus. As far as I can tell Defender was never supported on that platform.
 
https://support.microsoft...ty-essentials-download

ampfixer
I've looked at 2 Win 7 machines in the last week and both were unable to successfully perform updates for the system or Windows Defender. I saw on the MS site that defender no longer provides full protection under Win 7, but nothing about system updates.
 
I'm thinking they're actively trying to push people off the platform.

Depending on exactly where the machine is (updates wise), it can take a **long** time for the machine to connect to the MS update servers and download/install the Win7 updates.
There are several updates you can manually download/install... and ultimately circumvent the issue.
 
IMO, MS is doing this to "encourage" folks to move to Win10.
Not excusing MS in any way... but (at this point) Win10 is solid/robust as a DAW platform.
There's more to shut down, but with the Pro version the Group Policy Editor makes it easy to shut down Cortana, etc.
 
 
 

I did a clean install of my Win 7 Pro last fall, and getting the updates caught up to date was a painfully long process, with multiple reboots and re-checking for new updates.  So I made a disk image backup afterwards, to enable a quick restore if I ever need to reinstall. 
 
So last fall I think I picked up every update needed to grease the Win 7 update chute.
 
I have applied the monthly updates ever since without any issues. 
 
But I do recall earlier last year there were some seriously long delays for several months.  Many web forums chalked it up to a few required updates that could smooth things out.  But if you had hidden them, or failed to keep updates current, or did a clean install, you could easily fall out of step with the process.
 
Check out the resolutions in this article:  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3200747/windows-update-is-taking-an-unusually-long-time-to-scan-and-install-up

Windows 10 "out of the box" experience is crap.
 
But if you spend the time to wrangle it into submission, it is like Windows 7 on steroids.  Just sayin! 
 
Win 10 Pro version highly recommended!  *Group Policy Editor*

Frys and Newegg are still pushing those W7 Pro OEMs.  I still keep a W7 machine because of XP mode to keep using my Canon Scanner.  I don't really want to buy a new one, plus the hardware really can't be upgraded anymore.
 
I had the same issue but I can't remember the fix but leaving it on will do the same thing.  Networking in W10 is still broken. F'updates remove network credentials and then you have to login on each machine to get your shared drives back.
 

I used to have an old system that had Win 7/Win 10 as a dual boot system.  Eventually I wound up with Win 10 only as I found all my software (and recording hardware) ran on Win 10 (and some better) and I rarely booted to Win 7.  The old desktop, that was built at the start of Win 7 ran Win 10 without problems.  I don't do any system tweaking as it is basically a "vanilla" system anyway and the Latency Mon program shows no problems.  I do disable the Ethernet NIC (go off line) when running Sonar (a hold over from the Win 7 days and may not be needed).
 
If your hardware and software are all Win 10 compatible, I say go with Win 10.  I even get slightly lower latency with Win 10.