Microsoft begins cracking down on people dodging Windows 11's system requirements
People upgrading to Windows 11 with incompatible hardware have had an easy time so far, but Microsoft wants to change that.
Thank god, for a second there I thought they meant "cracking down on people dodging Windows 11 by intentionally disabling TPM," like I've been doing. False alarm, carry on.
That is half the reason I have it disabled on my desktop. The other half being that the BIOS updates never fixed the fTPM stuttering issues for my computer (both using the 3700X and 5800X) so the computer is unusable with it turned on.
If you're using Windows 11 and not having a great time with it, there are ways to make the experience more pleasant. We've covered 14 tweaks to make Windows 11 better and how to remove Windows 11's junk, which is a good start toward making an OS you enjoy.
There's another way...
Imagine having to remove a bunch of shit just so you can use your OS. smh
Luckily, there exists an OS which undermines extreme enshittification. Can't remember the name, though ...
You could install a windows 10 system to replace the windows 11 system!
Step one. Install Linux Mint.
So Microsoft wants to force everyone to ditch their perfectly good machines so they can make more money off of selling OEM licenses.
I'm just waiting for Europe to sue their greedy asses for planned obsolescence.
At the very least, they should be releasing some "Lite" version for older hardware or something.
It's such a catch-22 with Linux, because you're not going to see ads for it and most "normal" people don't even know what it is (and that they have a viable alternative to Windows).
I don't want ads for Linux, but I wish there was a way to elevate it into the general public consciousness so people are aware that they even have an option. AND ITS FREE.
While I do agree that a lot of the PCs that are deemed not compatible is really stupid, there are people that are trying to use Windows 11 on devices that have no business running it, so this is partially to prevent their devices from getting infected with a virus or something
I've lost count of how many times Microsoft, and many other big tech companies, hindered me from doing something I wanted to do on a device that I own for "security" reasons while it had absolutely nothing to do with security and everything to do with forcing their users to comply with their business model.
DRM chips have nothing to do with device security and everything to do with further controlling what you can and cannot do on your machine and making more money off of you.
You really shouldn't believe the Corporate bad faith arguments used to justify anti-consumer practices.
Why won't they get a virus or something on Windows 10 with that same hardware?
Since when is having vulnerable hardware the business of the operating system? Sure, they're allowed to do whatever they want, but it's stupid. It's your system. You should be able to try to run any software you want on it and the software shouldn't care (unless it just literally can't work, not a software check to make it not work).
I'm on Linux only though, so I may be biased. I think I own my computer and you may not agree with that.
Malware such as that imbedded in Windows 11?
“By god we have got to stop people from using Windows!”
Uh. Yes. Do that.
And here I am using a modern Linux OS on a 15 year old desktop without any issues or nagging to log into an online account or to backup all my shit to some server, open to hackers, in windows world.
No problem, I'm just dodging windows.
wants people to use windows 11 make it difficult to use windows 11 people find ways to use windows 11 anyway (what you wanted in the first place) punish them for using windows 11
???
People that are running a windows modified to disable the hardware eligibility checks are probably also disabling/deleting the telemetry and activation checks.
Microsoft doesn't want you to use windows 11, they want your money and data.
Which is why I dropped windows after 7 and went linux. Telemetry bullshit was odious in 10, but in 11 the spyware is basically one of the core functions/purposes.
Its why they pushed Windows 11 for free. Cause its not the product, you are.
Theres more money to be made in monetizing your daily using habits and selling them (and serving you tons of ads), than there is in making you pay 150-200 bucks for the new OS once.
And that new direction and drive radically alters how they develop the OS, and how you, the user, may interact with it. Which is why Windows is on the path of becoming a walled garden experience, with strict controls for "Security" (I.E. to keep you from doing anything that might impede their harvesting of data)
They're run by fire ants
Greed.
Sure, they want you to run Win11, but chances are you're already running it, or at least Win10, so there's not much to gain there.
By making higher requirements for Win11 than neccessary Microsoft makes a killing on Windows licences.
OEMs have to pay Microsoft for keys. And for MS to make money off of keys, OEMs need to make more PCs. And how does MS force/incentivise them to do that? By 80% of the Win10 PCs incompatible with Win11.
Oh, and also, now they get to push their Copilot key as well.
Microsoft has a vested interest in PC sales not stagnating any more than they do, and sometimes it takes an artificial push to make that a reality.
Used market is about to have some bargains on very usable Linux machines.
Cool. I can upgrade some of my decade old machines on the cheap.
Hopefully that newer hardware is as stable as what I already have.
Nice I could use a laptop
If you must use Windows, download it legitimately from MS website. Use RUFUS to burn the ISO image to a USB. Remove the restrictions you hate.
Dual boot a Linux variant, and move over apps at your leisure, until you are no longer Win OS dependent.
I just moved to Linux and started fresh.
The big mental change was instead of searching "sony vegas on linux please" I just started searching for "video editing software Linux", and take any possible limitations and live with them, as I know it's only temporary until Linux catches on.
I preferred to do Windows as a VM personally. Dual boot cost me a year before my Linux switch BC it was easier to boot Windows when I needed it. With VM I could do mostly Linux with maybe just vm to open a word doc if I needed it.
The thing that I don't understand is that, if this is such a big problem for Microsoft, why not just remove the system requirements or at least make an alternative version of Windows 11 that, even if it lacks certain features, doesn't have those requirements?
Microsoft wants people to switch to Windows 11 but a majority stay with Windows 10 because their systems don't have what's required and they're either not willing to use Linux or they can't for what ever their reason is. Making Windows 11 more accessible to Windows 10 users would fix this problem for most users but they're not for some reason. I know they're Microsoft and Microsoft doesn't care about their users but they're seemingly willing to lose a significant portion of their users over something so insignificant, which is out of character for Microsoft.
I'd guess it's corporate circlejerk - they probably made deals with hardware manufacturers who are annoyed people are not replacing their perfectly functional systems with new ones. Windows gets pre-installed on new systems, and in exchange windows requires new things forcing people to upgrade their old systems - or be locked out of the most popular OS in the world.
This right here, the whole tpm requirement was most likely pushed from OEM's wanting to sell new hardware.
Real reason? Because product managers are idiots.
Greedy. Don't attribute to incompetence what can be explained by greed.
Install Linux, be done with anything from Microsoft
but it seems that the Redmond giant has decided that enough is enough.
But why? People who take the effort have their reasons, find other ways.
Btw, Rufus patches the iso, works anyway.
They aren’t. The article is disingenuous.
It's not only TPM. Older chips are missing some actual security features. AMD not patching their old CPUs of their firmware bug will also become a big problem in the long run.
Not for Microsoft.
"Sorry, you're running an unsupported, deliberately hacked version of our OS. We can't help you."
I can play it back on ff mobile
It's hosted at the actual fsf website, not sure what to tell you. Sorry!
Well this was a good way to have me actually watch the video instead of skip over the link
M$ want to become even more unpopular with private users.
Many people don't care about privacy
I think they meant private as in private person, not privacy
microsoft missed their bottom line so they need more planned obscelance
How does that make any sense? Does Microsoft get a cut of sales for component upgrades?
people can't upgrade.
people see their computer isn't supported.
people buy a new computer.
oems license windows.
Well, they won't be able to sell as many new computers if they let people keep using their old ones.
I installed Linux mint on my laptop the other day because of various sustained long term annoyances with Windows. Despite some minor hiccups it only took about 30 minutes. It's been such a great experience so far.
I did the same. Windows 11 ads and one drive forced me out.
I've been on EndeavourOS (basically Arch.. btw...) for about a year and a half now, and I absolutely love it. I will never use Windows by choice again.
Did the same on my desktop computer two weeks ago, everything else is already on Linux (servers and laptops).
I am fed up on Microsoft shenanigans with windows.
Is there a way to make my PC seemingly not support Windows 11 so the annoying update nags go away? I'll never use that shit OS.
Disable tpm in bios
A few of my boxes have 7th gen processors. I get the nags and then it comes up and says oh sorry you're not eligible.
You can set a registry value so that there is no upgrade to win 11, but I don't know if it only works on enterprise.
It's barely helpful as it resets most regular updates, just disable TMP in bios.
Use a CPU ISA that Microsoft refuses to compile Windows for.
Itanium? It's still supported well into 2025.
SPARC V?
I’ll never use that shit OS.
Good luck come October of next year when Windows 10 goes EOL
Personally I'm just treating Windows 11 as a 2025 kind of problem...
Ever more reason to switch to Linux sooner than later. Otherwise, Windows 10 LTSC or Pro for Workstation.
I'm hoping for Windows 12. Just like I skipped from Win 7 straight to 10, 8 was completely unusable.
There's a long term support version for 10 as well, until 2029. That would be the alternative, if whatever successor they choose is as bad or worse.
Install Linux, be done with anything from Microsoft
Yup, that did the trick for me. I actually tried to upgrade to Windows 11 from Windows 10, and it refused to saying my HW wasn't good enough (1st gen Ryzen), I boot into my Linux partition and the problem goes away, no nags to install Windows 11, and I still get to play all the same games I did on Windows 10.
Seems to be a pretty permanent solution so far. ;)
Install Linux, be done with anything from Microsoft
Hey man, I think your keyboard is broken.
Every single reply you have made in this thread is just the exact same thing.
I know. It's noyy keyboard, it's me.
I've had 30 years of having to read one Microsoft bullshit article after another, and then watch people go like sheep and give more monies to Microsoft for their shit. I'm kinda done with that and if my replies are annoying to you, imagine me having to deal with that for 30 years already.
The simple truth is that Linux works, is more reliable and more usable than windows.. frankly, always had been. The biggest "ooohhh difficult!" part about it is that a few things work slightly different. Takes 5 minutes to understand and you go. Most people use windows with all its bullshit to do some word stuff and browse the internet. Guess what? You can do that too on Linux. Since 20 years ago already, that's how long I've been on Linux desktop.
Fuck Microsoft bullshit that always ALWAYS vuases problems
Good! The less PC's that run W11 the better
Is secure boot still required? Yes?
Can't force me to do shit Microsoft. Your own OS prevents it :)
I just installed Linux Mint on a 15-year-old desktop that has never been upgraded and was middle-of-the-road when I got it. It shipped with Windows 7, and I tried a couple of times to upgrade to 10 (it failed every time, either losing core hardware functionality, running so slowly as to be unusable, or just refusing to boot altogether). But it runs Linux like a dream. Seriously—it's easily running the latest version of Mint better than it ran an 11-year-old service pack of Windows 7.
What's even crazier is that I installed VirtualBox on it, and put Windows 10 on that, to use some work programs. And that runs Windows 10 a bit slowly, but otherwise more or less flawlessly!
That's right: I'm having a better Windows experience in Linux than I've ever had on baremetal Windows on this box.
I can't believe I didn't do this...well, 15 years ago.
I can't believe I didn't do this...well, 15 years ago.
For what it’s worth, your experience 15 years ago likely would have been very different. It’s only in the past few years that things like drivers for basic hardware have become widely available on Linux without a bunch of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And even today, there are still certain drivers that often don’t like to play nice.
Ask anyone who had an nvidia GPU 15 years ago if they’d suggest switching to Linux. The answer would have been a resounding “fuck no, it won’t work with your GPU.”
Fighting with Windows 11 introduced me to Linux Mint, which works perfectly! I'm not an OS geek, so I really don't care about the OS -- it's just the thing I deal with on the way to Firefox.
Every 2nd microsoft OS is bad. Its normal for them. XP good, vista bad, 7 good, 8 bad, 10 good, 11 bad.
Yes that's how they make you swallow the pill. Windows 12 will be "good", in that it will not be as bad as W11. But it will still move the public into the slaughterhouse a bit more.
Uh, no.
95 bad, 98 bad, 98SE good only compared to 98, XP actually decent, Vista only really bad because of the change in how drivers were handled and there not being a robust library of them because of it, 7 THE GOD KING OF WINDOWS OSes..The Best, The Pinnacle. The Peak. The Top of the bell curve, 8 was shit, 10 was more shit than 8, 11 is just spyware.
If you're calling 95 bad i don't think you spent a lot of time in 3.1. Resolving IRQ conflicts, configuring winsock.DLL, whatever the hell else. 95 had its issues, especially on the gaming side, but it was leaps and bounds better than what came before. Meanwhile 98SE was good enough to keep people, especially gamers, on it for a long time.
No. They're all bad, some are just worse than others. You've all just been stockholm syndromed into thinking better of the "less bad" ones.
W7 was fine. I cut the cord and went Linux before W10. It sucked for a year, and now I look at the trash they sell and everyone pays actual money for... And I laugh XD.
I generally agree, but I feel like Windows 8.1 was a vast improvement on 8. It was really more like Windows 9 with a Windows 8 theme.
Sure, it really isn't hard to be better than Windows 8... That doesn't make Windows 8.1 good, it just means it's less bad than Windows 8.
More people will be redirect to Linux, cool.
Sorry for disappoint you. But, normies don't know what is Linux about? hell even higher than average tech-savvy people know little bit Ubuntu as a Linux.
That would be me.
Tried Ubuntu 15 years ago, but couldn't because Nvidia driver issues, and haven't tried again
Look, dudes, I'm bootstrapping a small business while trying to manage ADHD. I can barely get two hours of admin work done in an eight hour day. I just need things to work. I'd love to walk away from Windows but I don't have the mental bandwidth for that shit
And even if I did, my wife and I share a gaming computer/media center. There's nothing like having her call me in the middle of a workday because my VPN is keeping her from logging into PBS so that she can watch Grantchester. Imagine the headaches if I installed a new OS.
Much like improving my physical fitness, I have the desire, but not the will
I'm a sysadmin. We're a Linux shop, I spend my life deep in the guts of Linux boxes, both server and desktop.
And for my daily-driver both at work and at home, I use windows.
The UI and overall UX are just better. The annoying bullshit I make a living knowing my way around, I don't have to think about.
For actual development or backend services, of course you want a Linux box. Proper logging, proper tools, build shit, pipe it together, automate stuff and get down and technical when it breaks. Doing that on windows is absolutely hell.
But on windows, the volume control just works, I never have to delete lockfiles to get my browser to open, my desktop login doesn't terminate if something in .profile returned nonzero, I can play every video game out there without having to fuck around, I can use native versions of real apps, I don't have package-management dependency hell, all the pieces were designed to work with each other, and the baseline cognitive load needed to just use my computer is zero, which frees up my brain to focus on my actual work, or for playing games and fucking around on the internets.
Just gotta spread the word. I got two people to switch from Windows to Linux recently. When they heard about an alternative they got very interested and jumped on the opportunity. People want an alternative, but like you say they don't know one exists, so we need to keep spreading the word of Linux.
PS. They both are enjoying the ad free experience and don't have any big issues or problems with Linux. Just learning pains
Article isn’t that great. The change is in beta, and it’s preventing the installer from accepting a switch that declares the OS to be a server product.
MS hasn’t said it’s going after any upgrades that are running out of spec hardware. This really sounds like they are just fixing an upgrade option.
I'm sorry is this the fucking draft
Are we going to war or is the author bad at writing?
lol sorry, i meant in the war sense... cracking down on "dodging" minimum requirements sounded so self-serious, like the government cracking down on draft dodgers or something.
As far as i know, windows 10 is still more functional, less of a resource hog (in windows terms), far FAR less telemetry and it just looks fucking nicer. It costs nothing to not upgrade, or you pay the tribute and join the linux brotherhood
You've got around 9 months left on Win10 supportability. Then it will move in to LTS channels only. It was incredibly well adopted so we have to believe any open vulnerabilities will be targeted quickly and relentlessly. Sadly, we will be in a 11 only world by this time next year.
Why though? This just means that Windows 11 will run on more devices? Why is so important for your device to have a TPM and Secure Boot enabled, and a supported processor? If I were Microsoft, I would put the requirements even lower or even removed them.
This is just my theory, but maybe they want to turn it all into android-levels of lockdown for even stricter DRM and such.
If it's just an installer check then people could just use the old installer versions and update afterward right? Or are they planning on stopping updates for unsupported hardware that already installed windows 11?
It's MS. I wouldn't be surprised if they bricked systems attempting to bypass the requirements.
My guess is one of the upcoming major updates will either refuse to install, or will try to install and fail, if you try that route.
Something like that happened with a 2006-era laptop I have with Windows 10. It ran Windows 10 fine for several years, but finally one of the big updates decided it no longer liked some of the Vista-era drivers I was using. The update would try to install, fail, and roll back. And since Windows doesn't let you turn off or disable updates, a few days later it would try again only to fail in the exact same way.
This is just Vista all over again. Calm down people. Go to Linux or church if you're scared.
The difference is, that you could just continue using XP until Win7 was released or continue using Win7 until Win10 was released. Win10 will reach end of life next year and then the only supported Windows will be Windows 11. Vista or Win8 were never as forced as Win11 is now.
The timeline for the lifecycle is 10 years. That's ample time for an OS generation.
I used XP until Windows 8 was released. At least I got a cheap Windows 8 key from Microsoft back then. And upgraded to 8.1 and later to 10. So I got my money's worth out of it.
Such a shame things will never be as good as they were again.
not really because Vista does not have strong hardware requirements. But, this one have
Today, sure.
2005 was a different story, one the opposite of this one.
While Vista didn't have high specified requirements, it gobbled resources so updating from XP to Vista you'd have a noticable slowdown.
Win11 is the opposite of that story. While modern PC models (as in 5-year-old when Win11 first came out) can run Win11 fine, Microsoft forces requirements which aren't needed.
Sure, while having a better TPM and newer processor is a good thing, making anything other than that ewaste (because windows runs 90+% of consumer PCs, with Apple being the majority of the 10%) definitely isn't.
Cant crack what you cant reach
I only use Windows 11 because it came preinstalled on the latest laptop I bought. Otherwise I have been a Linux user for over 15 years and will switch back sooner or later. Microsoft is making their products the immoral choice and I do recommend boycotting them.
Honestly surprised something similar isn't the cutting edge.
Wait a second... We have repealable "ownership" of digital media all over, my mistake!
"How dare people install our OS without a DRM clipper chip"
"My OS is so secure!" Actually features of the hardware.
I've literally been trying to install windows 11 several times. I've made my PC support it, but the update just breaks and rolls back every time
When googling I see others with the same issue but no solution
Install Linux, be done with anything from Microsoft
So what was the conspiracy theory around tpm requirements, bitlocker and copilot? Some new privacy nightmare?
Install Linux, be done with anything from Microsoft
Here's the best way you can dodge Windows 11 system requirements, and trust me.. you'll never look back. Infact, you can dodge Microsoft all together.
Thank me later. https://manjaro.org/products/download/x86
manjaro
Are you sure they'll be thanking you? ;)
Honestly, I'm so sick of Microsoft's bullshit, I just want to spread to love of Linux desktop. They're more than free to downvote me in to oblivion. I'm pro-freedom over the software, open source software, and freedom to use the hardware we want to use. Plus I really love Manjaro and XFCE. KDE's a good experience, but Windows 11 has advertisements in its start menu, and I'm not entirely sure what that 'screenshot your desktop to feed an AI' stuff was about but I'm not really down with that.
So, don't thank me, but I would hope more people enjoy the different flavors of Linux desktop or give them a chance. The only way to not have Microsoft jam its software/cloud services/Teams down your throat is to get the HIPAA related Windows 11 OS which they make it a pain in the butt to grab.