News Microsoft allows Windows 11 to be installed on older, unsupported hardware but specifically nixes official support — minimum requirements for full...

[pug_s]

You missed off Windows 2000, the goat, light, snappy, simple, little bloat, ran comfortably in 128MB, ran beautifully in 256MB.

Windows 2000 is okay, but many companies skppped it to Windows XP.

 

[mac_angel]

because they want to put as much tracking <Mod Edit> on as many computers as they can, but not take responsibility if it bricks them.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

The problem is that you can't get everyone to comply with your requirements - even if they're valid.

TPM 2.0 was never a valid requirement, and that's literally the only thing making many quite capable machines "unsupported" since the other requirements describe most PCs built since the Vista era.

 

[USAFRet]

TPM 2.0 was never a valid requirement, and that's literally the only thing making many quite capable machines "unsupported" since the other requirements describe most PCs built since the Vista era.

MS had been pushing that TPM 2.0 thing for years before Win 11.

The manufacturers said "naaa...we're not gonna do that"

"OK, now we're gonna make it a requirement!"

 

[DS426]

...
So, when they made Windows 11, they decided to cut it all off : nothing older than 5 years will be supported, PERIOD - 64-bit mode only, AVX2 required, TPM 2.0 and UEFI to remove 35 years of BIOS hackery...

And that's fine -- they had every right to move the baseline -- but they went with an arbitrary 5 years instead of specific hardware features. For example, what does Zen+ have in microarch that Zen doesn't? Same with Kaby Lake Refresh over Kaby Lake. Zen 1 and Skylake would have been reasonable cut-offs and included millions of more machines, but nah, screw those folks.

 

[Colif]

MS had been pushing that TPM 2.0 thing for years before Win 11.

The manufacturers said "naaa...we're not gonna do that"

"OK, now we're gonna make it a requirement!"

Same as Secure Boot will be enforced on 12 but PC only really needs to be able to turn it on in 11. Baby steps, perhaps by then enough hardware makers will be ready.
TPM was dumb though as some hardware makers were actually removing it from their hardware just before windows made 11.

I wonder how much pressure MS gets from hardware makers to keep releasing new versions, as they don't make much money if their old hardware just keeps working. Its not just MS that wants changes.

 

[excalibur1814]

"Microsoft allows Windows 11 to be installed on older, unsupported hardware"

Thanks Microsoft. Imagine that, being grateful for something. (Incoming rage)

Looking forward to grabbing Windows 12... for FREE, once it hits.

 

[abufrejoval]

Same as Secure Boot will be enforced on 12 but PC only really needs to be able to turn it on in 11. Baby steps, perhaps by then enough hardware makers will be ready.

That's exactly the reason they need to be kicked about TPM today, because without resistance they'll just make turning the screws "normal".

Not everyone wants secure boot or storage encryption, beause it creates quite a few obstacles not everyone wants or needs.

And it also creates new vulnerabilities typically exploited by state actors, which can be just as rogue as a mean script kiddy.

Nobody has issues with Microsoft enabling new features that provide value.

Very few peopel appreciate having "features" forced down their throat, that not only fail to provide value but obsoletes hardware that is perfectly adequate and usable otherwise. And very few stationary PCs need full disk encryption while maintaining those for relatives and friends becomes a lot harder that way.

TPM was dumb though as some hardware makers were actually removing it from their hardware just before windows made 11.

I wonder how much pressure MS gets from hardware makers to keep releasing new versions, as they don't make much money if their old hardware just keeps working. Its not just MS that wants changes.

It's quite obviously collusion, M$ only gets a chance to sell a new OS license.

That's why regulation needs to whip both in shape.

 

[ezst036]

When Windows 10 was released in 2015, they had just laid off 18,000 employees the year before, including the entire QA department, on the premise that they would just ship a beta to the masses and "telemetry will just tell us what to fix" for the actual paying Enterprise customers on a slower release schedule.

This axing of the QA team seems to be a bit of the stuff of internet legend.

I can't find anything concrete about it by searching, only ongoing forum posters saying it - so therefore it must be true.

 

[9900k]

This whole thing is kinda stupid. The hardware requirements for Win11 are all artificial limitations. Win11 is just Win10 but with artificial limitations, a horrible UI and a ton of extra crap. MS adding support for older hardware wouldn't mean anything as it's easy to bypass the artificial requirements and limitations unless it's talking about supporting systems even 10 can't run on but I think that might be impossible.

Also, them saying that they can't guarantee stability and that users may experience additional issues is BS. That doesn't happen when you bypass the artificial limitations set by 11, as it's essentially the same as 10 but crappier.

Windows 11 sucks.
Win7:

 

[mitch074]

You missed off Windows 2000, the goat, light, snappy, simple, little bloat, ran comfortably in 128MB, ran beautifully in 256MB.

Except hardly anybody used it because many games didn't run on it and it was expensive.
XP (up until sp1) was not much more than 2000 with a Fisher-Price UI and a lower price tag for the Home version, so I see where you're coming from. SP2 was, frankly, a new OS for a new PC world : multithreading and multicore became common place, internet worms were widespread and the second navigator war took place...

 

[mitch074]

This axing of the QA team seems to be a bit of the stuff of internet legend.

I can't find anything concrete about it by searching, only ongoing forum posters saying it - so therefore it must be true.

There : https://arstechnica.com/information...-development-practices-into-the-21st-century/
I cite the relevant passage :

However, there are costs to this setup. The recent layoffs have been poorly communicated both within Microsoft and beyond, but one victim group appears to have been the dedicated programmatic testers in the Operating Systems Group (OSG)

 

[SomeoneElse23]

This whole thing is kinda stupid. The hardware requirements for Win11 are all artificial limitations. Win11 is just Win10 but with artificial limitations, a horrible UI and a ton of extra crap. MS adding support for older hardware wouldn't mean anything as it's easy to bypass the artificial requirements and limitations unless it's talking about supporting systems even 10 can't run on but I think that might be impossible.

Also, them saying that they can't guarantee stability and that users may experience additional issues is BS. That doesn't happen when you bypass the artificial limitations set by 11, as it's essentially the same as 10 but crappier.

Windows 11 sucks.
Win7:

As I was thinking about WHY MS is doing this, aside from pleasing their hardware partners, I realized that, at the end of the day, MS *really* wants to know who you are, where you are, and what you do.

Your "Microsoft Account" allows them to do all of that a whole lot easier than before.

So, they force people to use an MS account in Windows 11. Yes, there are ways around it, but the average person won't.

For those that aren't interested in their latest OS, which is the same pig with new lipstick, they dangle a "you can pay for updates for Win 10" carrot in front of you. How will MS know your PC paid for it? By requiring a MS account, of course.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

Except hardly anybody used it because many games didn't run on it and it was expensive.
XP (up until sp1) was not much more than 2000 with a Fisher-Price UI and a lower price tag for the Home version, so I see where you're coming from. SP2 was, frankly, a new OS for a new PC world : multithreading and multicore became common place, internet worms were widespread and the second navigator war took place...

While greater games compatibility was one of XP’s advantages I didn’t have a game fail to run on Win 2K. It was $200 when I got my copy, replaced ME on a Sony Viao laptop.

It was same as XP for worm/virus vulnerabilities but service packs were offered and installed. They weren’t as publicised as SP2 which was a necessity, Windows was full of holes. 2000 facilitated multitasking too. The big thing was it’s isn’t look like a fisher price design and felt snappy… oh and there was no windows activation with 2000.

 

[mitch074]

While greater games compatibility was one of XP’s advantages I didn’t have a game fail to run on Win 2K. It was $200 when I got my copy, replaced ME on a Sony Viao laptop.

It was same as XP for worm/virus vulnerabilities but service packs were offered and installed. They weren’t as publicised as SP2 which was a necessity, Windows was full of holes. 2000 facilitated multitasking too. The big thing was it’s isn’t look like a fisher price design and felt snappy… oh and there was no windows activation with 2000.

"Newer" games did take it into accounts, but games from 1998 would often bug out - FF7 for PC for example would try and write to RAM addresses it didn't own before the chocobo races - on win9x it raised no flags, but Win2000 would crash the app on a memory exception (yes, Windows 2000 was a proper OS). A community patch circumvented it, but it was not alone in that situation - I seem to remember that the original release of Unreal had troubles (that were soon patched out) too, Max Payne did not officially support it either (it did work properly though)...