Microsoft is taking another step towards finally eradicating the ancient SMB1 protocol and plans to disable it by default in all Windows 11 versions.
As per the company’s practice, Dev Channel Windows Insiders will first not have the protocol installed for all builds. This will be the default for the next major version of Windows 11, expected later this year. In-place upgrades that SMB1 is already in use are not affected, and administrators who really need it can restart it on purpose.
So 2022 will be the year of Windows 11 without a fresh install that installs the old protocol by default.
Microsoft’s Ned Pyle, the lead program manager for the Windows Server High Availability and Storage group who has been waging a war on the protocol within the walls of Redmond for years, also has news about the future:
“We will remove the SMB1 binaries in a future release. Windows and Windows Server will no longer include drivers and DLLs for SMB1.”
Microsoft will still provide installation packages for organizations that cannot live without SMB1, but according to Pyle, it will not be supported. That NAS thing that’s been lurking under the stairs for a decade or so, or a weird piece of hardware on the factory floor.
News has a certain inevitability. Microsoft has released Windows 10 and Windows Server 1709 without SMB1 installed by default. Windows 10 Home and Pro still have clients just in case. However, it will automatically uninstall in an unmanaged environment if it has not been used for 15 days (excluding the time the computer was shut down).
Starting with Windows 10 1809, the Pro edition no longer includes the SMB1 client by default.
Other groups are also working on file-sharing protocols. For example, some parts of it have been removed from Samba 4.16, and the project has stated that SMB1 is deprecated and turned off by default since Samba 4.11. However, this is the final cut-off that Pyle promises in Windows, potentially causing those old NAS boxes that still rely on it to be shut down for good.
As for why it took Microsoft so long to get to this point, Pyle simply said: “I have to save this Home edition behavior for last, which will cause consumer concern among people who are still using very old devices. Painful and least likely to understand why their new Windows 11 laptop won’t connect to their old network hard drive group.”
With support for Windows 10 until 2025, it looks like there’s still a silver lining to this old, terribly insecure dog. However, the end is definitely near. ®
