But is the CPU not compatible? I was under the impression Microsoft artificially creates an incompatibility in a shameless move to push users to an ad based OS. I wasn't aware that any cpu instruction had been removed that would prevent Win7 from running normally.
Only because Microsoft wrote a line of code that says if CPU is this model than do not run.
There is a big irony in Microsoft writing that sort of code given the efforts they have to go through to make applications with similar code (if OS version > 7 then do not run) run anyway by lying to the application about the windows version.
But apparently the CPU and chipset work well enough to run enough of the operating system that windows update can display a GUI error message with error code "Code 80240037", which is what the OP link to.
Who would design a chipset that is backwards compatible enough to boot windows and all its services in GUI mode, but not backwards compatible enough to run windows update?
If you run an old Linux or bsd kernel on these chips, do you get to login to X only to find a kernel error when you run apt-get update?
But the drivers aren't part of the OS nor are they written by microsoft. I don't see why Microsoft would block the OS running on a particular generation of CPU.
See also: UEFI, >4GB of RAM, booting GPT disks, booting from PCI-E devices (or heck, even USB or CD, though that's been supported for a while now, but boot floppies used to be the norm), AHCI (old SATA stuff would emulate IDE). This is nothing new.
