Do you remember that news about old computers being unable to run the latest version of Windows 11 because they lacked the POPCNT instruction set? It turns out the problem isn't just installing the latest operating system on ancient hardware. Windows 10 users with older processors may now be stuck in a blue screen loop due to unsupported NVIDIA graphics drivers.

About a month ago, NVIDIA published a knowledge base article about the end of its driver support for older computers that do not contain the POPCNT instruction set. This is not just an arbitrary unsupported state: installing driver 555 or newer on a system with a supported NVIDIA GPU and an unsupported processor will cause the entire system to crash with a BSOD with error code SYSTEMTHREADEXCEPTIONNOTHANDLED.

Starting with version 555, the NVIDIA display driver will no longer support older CPUs that do not support the POPCNT (fill count) instruction. Although Microsoft's official version of Windows 10/Windows 11 no longer supports these CPUs, if the user's computer uses an unsupported CPU and attempts to install the R555+ display driver, a BSOD blue screen will appear when the computer starts Windows.

If Windows 10 users have systems with older processors that still support graphics cards (such as the GTX750Ti and newer), they may need to adjust their Windows Update settings to prevent the operating system from automatically downloading version 555 or newer drivers.

However, there may not be many Windows users using Core 2Duo systems that still support NVIDIA graphics cards, so this news is unlikely to cause much reaction among Windows users. However, if your old pre-SSE4.2 system with a GTX750Ti or GTX950 fails to boot after updating the graphics driver, you now know why.

To check if your PC supports the POPCNT instruction:

1. Download the utility Coreinfo from the Microsoft website:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/coreinfo

2. Decompress the contents of the Coreinfo compressed file.

3. In the extracted folder, right-click and select Open in Terminal


4. A terminal window will appear. Type the command shown in the screenshot below, and then press the ENTER key:

.coreinfo64-f


5. If this is the first time you start Coreinfo, the license agreement will appear. Agree to continue.


6. The CPU instruction set supported by the computer will be listed. Please look for POPCNT to confirm whether the CPU supports the instruction set.