Don't understand warning about Windows release

[Chre]

Hi all here,

My Tor browser 13.5.3 on Windows say me at each start something like that (I’m in french version):

The next major version of the tor browser (14.0) will no longer support this version of Windows. Please move to Windows 10 or later by October 1, 2024 to continue receiving important security updates

But… my Windows release is already MS Windows 10 Enterprise 22H2 (version 10.0.19045.3448).

Why I have this warning? Does that mean Tor browser 14.x won’t run on my computer?

Thanks for help.

[thorin]

The warning/message should only be happening on Win7/8/8.1

If you’re on Win10 and getting this, then that may be an issue for our updating/code being able to correctly update you. Windows 10 is supported. I have pinged our updater code magician

edit: @PieroV

[PieroV]

@Chre hi!

Could you please run this test?

1. Open about:config
2. Search devtools.chrome.enabled
3. Flip it to true by double clicking on it
4. Press Click Ctrl+Shift+J and ignore the contents you already see
5. Paste these commands (one at the time):

Services.sysinfo.getProperty("version")
Services.vc.compare(Services.sysinfo.getProperty("version"), "10.0")

6. Close the console and set devtools.chrome.enabled to false again (by double clicking again).

What are your results?
I get this in my Windows 10 VM:

You should get the same.

[Chre]

@PieroV

Services.vc.compare(Services.sysinfo.getProperty("version"), "10.0")

You’re right, something wrong on my computer:

Services.sysinfo.getProperty(“version”)
“6.1”
Services.vc.compare(Services.sysinfo.getProperty(“version”), “10.0”)
-1

I don’t know why it is 6.1. Can I change it in my registry?

[PieroV]

Uhm. That is really, really strange.
I investigated a little bit, and it seems we take that information from the OS thorugh PR_GetSystemInfo, which, in turn, uses GetVersionEx.
Some additional MS docs say only Windows 7 reports 6.1.
Could you please check you aren’t running under compatibility mode for some reason?
If the browser detects you’re running on Windows 7 for any reason, it’ll refuse to update to 14.0, when the time comes.

Edit: I tried to run Tor Browser Nightly in Windows 7 compatibility mode, and in this way I can reproduce the misdetection:

(and you can see that is Windows 10 indeed, and in any case the current nightlies would not run on Windows 7, because Mozilla started using APIs that aren’t in Windows 7 but have been introduced with Windows 8 or later).

[Chre]

@PieroV

Could you please check you aren’t running under compatibility mode for some reason?

Wow! Good catch. Compatibility mode Windows7 was set. I don’t remember why, but it is certainly my fault
Unset compatibility mode solve the issue

Sorry for the inconvenience and many thanks for help

[PieroV]

No worries!
Actually, thank you! This was a good catch and thanks to your feedback we will mention compatibility mode in the 14.0 release post.
I expect at that point several other users will find this problem .
I wonder if other users already found it, but dismissed the notification, thinking it’s shown to everybody.