Windows 11 update accidentally brings the OS to older machines | Hacker News Reader

Windows 11 update accidentally brings the OS to older machines

techradar.com

35 pointsddtaylor52 comments

I understand that they have Reasons, but it sucks that my Core i3 laptop with 1TB SSD and 24GB RAM is deemed "too old" to run Windows 11 (by one CPU generation), when the current lineup of laptops at Best Buy have way worse specs.

I'm running Windows 11 on 11 year old hardware wihtout any TPM. I doubt you can't install it on your machine if you tried a clean install.

The TPM things was mostly a showstopper if you upgraded from Windows 10 but easily bypassed via a clean install.

Linux always boots perfectly fine with TPM hardware support disabled, even when there actually is such a chip built in.

The real showstopper would be if "SecureBoot" would be enforced. I hope it never actually happens for personal computers. Everything else in the consumer electronics business is pretty much a lost cause already.

> The real showstopper would be if "SecureBoot" would be enforced. I hope it never actually happens for personal computers. Everything else in the consumer electronics business is pretty much a lost cause already.

This is the end game. Widespread hardware and software support with default off, then default on, then always on. All to protect users from themselves of course.

The so called "end game" is already here on mobile/tablets with iOS and most Android devices. And also Chromebooks. I have a Chromebook that got bricked because the TPM malfunctioned and there's no way to repair it without replacing the mainboard. Yet all these devices are credited with being more secure devices compared to PCs.

> Yet all these devices are credited with being more secure devices compared to PCs.

Yes. They are more secure for the manifacturer. Do you want to give this app access to your files ? To all your files. And it phones home. Encrypted so you cannot see.

Security ≠ Privacy

Win 8 had a secure boot. It was tricky to get Linux working on that system.

Right now, I am looking into repurposing an old thin client as a daily driver machine.

Dell's Wyse 5070 (and 5470 AIO with a passable for non professional graphics usage 24" display) thin clients are $100 (ebay or even dell outlet) machines that make great daily drivers. they aren't speed demons, but with a m.2 ssd stick and 8-16GB of ram, they are more than fast enough for every day use (my 5470 seemed to just stay at a 2.4ghz boost clock in a reasonably ACd room (and with just passive cooling to its cpu, no fan). So don't even need really old ones.

they also make great plex servers, due to intel quicksync for transcoding videos.

TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are two different things. Secure Boot has been enforced by default for the better part of a decade now with the major consumer Linux distros supporting it, and can be disabled in the BIOS setup.

SecureBoot prevents a very dangerous set of persistent rootkits that are completely invisible to the OS, not sure why tech savvy folks are against it for the vast majority of computer users, even Linux ones. Many UEFI setups allow you to add your own keys to the EFI and self-sign.

>Linux always boots perfectly fine with TPM hardware support disabled, even when there actually is such a chip built in

That would mean Linux is less secure in that scenario since the TPM is used to secure store things like hard drive encryption keys.

Secure boot is at least on the latest insider versions I'm on. I was unable to apply updates on the dev flights because my updated motherboard BIOS had the default option enabled for CSM which I thought was absurd when I finally looked. So yeah. You can't install future versions of Windows 11 with CSM enabled.

I noticed the same with an older i7 here. The requirements are nonsensical.

I have i7-8700K but I'm using the legacy mode, meaning if I'd want to install Win11 I would have to format the entire computer, which for obvious reasons I'm unwilling to do.

I think I'll probably be using Win10 for as long as I can and then switch to Linux. My laptops already run Linux (Debian :P) so I'm quite used to it.

It still feels dumb not being able to just upgrade my computer to Win11... I'm running GTX 1080, CPU mentioned above, 16 GB of RAM... There really isn't any reason why I shouldn't be allowed to upgrade in such a way that I can keep all of my files...

I'm guessing that Win10 will probably be sunset in about 5-10 years so I'm actually quite excited to see how far will Linux get by then!

Especially when we all know that some 90% of windows 11 is really windows 10, 7, XP, etc... underneath.

That's an odd and unbalanced configuration. What do you use it for?

Too much Chrome tabs?

Why it sucks? They are doing you the service, you just don't realize it. Each new Windows upgrade brings more disadvantages/limitations than advantages. I'm using W10 and I guess that will be my last one, when I installed new OS on other laptop I went for 8.1, if I installed new OS on my main laptop I would probably go for W7 or at worst W8.1, those two were peak Windows, it's all downhill since then.

Ye "security" ... sure. If it boots there seem to be no checks that actually need the TPM.

I guess TPM gives the oppurtunity for harder to tamper fingerprinting for ads or something.

DRM.

I’ve got a really beefy PC with Windows 10 on it. Apparently it “doesn’t meet the requirements” for Windows 11. Hopefully that means I’ll never be able to get it in an update.

Due to Microsoft’s insane forced update policy, I’ve moved to an M1 and am de-Microsofting everything in my setup. It doesn’t feel like my computer anymore.

M1 with SIP enabled (by default) isn't "your computer" either.

Fair point, I didn't even know about SIP (new Mac user). As long as it behaves like a nice little thin client I'm happy.

If you think Apple has your best interests at heart, I'd like to kindly direct you to what happens when they have total control — it's iOS.

The duopoly doesn't want you to own your general purpose computing device.

But it's now a thin client, the idea being that it logs into the beefy PC - running a Linux server

Apple just announced that computers they were selling in 2019 will not be supported for their next macos update...

You bury the lede - those 2019 computers are on a different processor architecture.

As long as they keep security updates for Intel for a few years, I'm not terribly disturbed.

I have just about had it with Windows 11. After the promise that 10 was the final version, we now see that 11 us pure bloatware designed for planned obsolescence to sell more machines. Mint is already installed an another machine of mine, and I am running Office 365 with CrossOver. The only thing keeping me on Windows is a series of PowerShell programs I designed that help me get my work done. As soon as I get those ported to Linux, I will make the switch.

Also, I am not sure if this was just my personal experience, but Office locally installed no longer worked after the update to 11, so I was forced to buy 365. It was a shakedown. If Microsoft thinks this is going to help with retention, they are sorely mistaken.

Why do you use toxic online O365 and not older better Office, O19 was last decent Office not requiring internet, though even that went already way far.

There is a utility called InControl [1] that will manipulate some registry keys for you to pin your machine to a specific major version and feature update release. In other words, it can prevent automatic upgrades to a future Windows version.

[1] https://www.grc.com/incontrol.htm

or you can just use company policy without any extra utility to disable the updates

I haven't seen a blue screen of death on Windows for a long time.

But today my 1 year old Windows 10 laptop crashed during work hours and just the day before it also appeared on my coworker's desktop PC. The dump showed problems with DirectX graphics.

That’s usually your video card driver. Try checking for updates or rollback there

IME a machine with a discrete AMD or Nvidia graphics card will see, at best, 2x as many reliability-harming problems as one without.

That even seemed to hold for Intel Macs. The ones with Intel graphics had way fewer problems.

I assume the requirements are more geared towards OEMs. Microsoft trying to push them to improve low end machines.

They are also making SSDs mandatory (for OEMs) in 2023 [1]

[1] https://gadgets360.com/laptops/news/microsoft-windows-11-pc-...

Saw this live and assumed MS had just changed their mind on how important tpm is

TPM is still clearly optional on Win 11.

Microsoft is just pulling the same trick they did with normalizing the telemetry. First it was opt-in, then it became opt-out and then, when the complacency settled in and everyone got used to their machines leaking like rusted buckets, the trap closed shut and it became always-on.

Same with the TPM, except the effect will be far more disasterous - a complete loss of admin control over your machine when it runs under Windows. Won’t happen in W11. Probably not in W12, but you will be locked out eventually. That’s their end goal. But for now the unwashed gray masses need to be made used to the TPM. Hence all this circus.

Realistically, can anything be done from a regulation standpoint? I would love a law that requires those who sell operating systems to enable users to use their system without being forced to create a profile that registered them to an Apple/Microsoft/Google account and forces them to provide options to disable telemetry.

Thing is OS is becoming so much less relevant with the browsers and mobile - what's the end goal here ? Even without admin access they can't gate keep you like iOS can because iOS mandates the browser engine and won't let it become powerful enough to circumvent the app store - Microsoft can't ever really do that with Windows and with things like WASM and better APIs I suspect web is going to keep growing as an app platform.

So what's the play behind this lockdown ?

Probably mainly to make it impossible to disable “telemetry” spyware or other invasive “features” like treating torrent clients as if they were malware etc.

remote attestation is a big one

netflix / online games / banking applications / ... will be able to check if your computer is tamperproof and will refuse to run if not

you already see this on android with safetynet: https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet/attestation

the other one is they'll be able to gatekeep the applications running on Windows (again like mobile phones)

Same thing happening on iOS right now. Banking app refuses to run if you jailbroke your phone

The TPM is used for various security features, see: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/informatio.... Providing better security is the play.

> Same with the TPM, except the effect will be far more disasterous - a complete loss of admin control over your machine when it runs under Windows.

You can just switch it all off in UEFI? What's the problem?

My guess is that they really want to do this because:

1. they're trying to push OEMs to care a little bit about security in their designs

2. it helps OEMs sell new devices and therefore new windows licenses

3. public opinion on windows security is bad

> You can just switch it all off in UEFI? What's the problem?

Until you can't...

Who is going to do that, and why?

Windows 11 "accidentally" being installed on my computer is my worst nightmare. Really hope this "bug" doesn't make it to the public release channel.

Yeah, the TPM requirement is awful for it's own reasons but the silver lining for me was I could just make sure the TPM was disabled and not have to run defense like with the Windows 10 stealth upgrades. But of course, I knew that was to good to be true.

That said, I only personally run Windows in VMs these days and I have them all set to seabios so I have a second defense.

The requirements are a joke. I've installed Win 11 on 15 year old hardware and it's been running for over a year without problems.

> without problems

Having just stumbled into it after a colleague upgraded a shared machine, the advertising situation on it is grim.

     choco install blackbird

https://www.getblackbird.net/documentation/

Use at your own risk! Not officially supported for 11.

They don't seem to do anything insane like blocking security updates, I might try it!

The requirements aren't for what can run Windows 11, but what they will support. I think it also allows them to drop solutions for spectre/meltdown vulnerabilities which had big performance impacts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com