Microsoft officially announces Windows 11

[mxnerd]

G3258 machine, no TPM, no secure boot.
Win11 won't install saying it did not meet minimum requirement.
I did the trick I mentioned above. The only extra thing I had to do was install the Intel HD Graphics driver.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I had to enable the TPM module to pass the windows 11 compatibility test.

 

[WelshBloke]

I'm pretty convinced that Win11 will probably install on most things that run Win10.
What won't work however is most of Microsofts security enhancements that are based on the newer requirements. That's why I think that they are saying other configurations are not supported. (Not supported has never meant "will absolutely not work at all on", it just means "don't complain to us if stuff doesn't work")

Anyway we'll see in half a year or so.

 

[jpiniero]

I'm pretty convinced that Win11 will probably install on most things that run Win10.
What won't work however is most of Microsofts security enhancements that are based on the newer requirements. That's why I think that they are saying other configurations are not supported. (Not supported has never meant "will absolutely not work at all on", it just means "don't complain to us if stuff doesn't work")

Anyway we'll see in half a year or so.

It sounds like MS will actively block installations. Whether you can hack it to install anyway, and have no problems using 11 is another story.

 

[VivienM]

Again, MS try to trick you. All those requirements are for new OEM machines.

Minimum hardware requirements

This topic defines the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 10 and all types of devices or computers designed for this release.

docs.microsoft.com

View attachment 46321

https://download.microsoft.com/download/7/8/8/788bf5ab-0751-4928-a22c-dffdc23c27f2/Minimum%20Hardware%20Requirements%20for%20Windows%2011.pdf

Ummm, they have a compatibility check tool that fails machines based on exactly the specs people are outraged about, including every pre-8th gen Intel CPU, every system with no enabled TPM, etc. Why would they do that if it was for new OEM systems only??

 

[Insert_Nickname]

It sounds like MS will actively block installations. Whether you can hack it to install anyway, and have no problems using 11 is another story.

That's what has me worried too. I can absolutely get it installed myself, but I can't really go around doing that for others, as then I'll be on the hook for support.

I'm hoping it fizzles out, based on the reaction everywhere. MS tried making TPM a requirement for Vista, then 8 and now 11. We'll see what comes out of it this time.

 

[VivienM]

I'm hoping it fizzles out, based on the reaction everywhere. MS tried making TPM a requirement for Vista, then 8 and now 11. We'll see what comes out of it this time.

It's not just the TPM, it's also the CPU requirement. There are plenty of eligible systems with TPMs that are getting caught by that CPU requirement.

 

[mxnerd]

Ummm, they have a compatibility check tool that fails machines based on exactly the specs people are outraged about, including every pre-8th gen Intel CPU, every system with no enabled TPM, etc. Why would they do that if it was for new OEM systems only??

Try to convince you to buy a new system so MS & its partners can make a profit, make sense? I have reiterated many times, and you can view my past posts regarding Win 11 installation and requirements, and whether the compatibility check tool result is true or not.

 

[VivienM]

Try to convince you to buy a new system so MS & its partners can make a profit, make sense? I have reiterated many times, and you can view my past posts regarding Win 11 installation and requirements, and whether the compatibility check tool result is true or not.

Maybe, maybe not. But I guess I don't see the advantage of wishful thinking? The more anger their PR team sees everywhere, the more likely it is that if the worst case scenario is right, they are going to change their mind. Whereas if people hope for the best and it turns out the worst is what ships at the end of the year, then... what?

Best case scenario, really, there's so much anger that they come out and say "oh no, you misunderstood us, this was only for new OEM systems, don't worry". Whether that is true or just a face saving move, who cares?

Also, it's like they learned nothing from the Vista debacle - a product that IMO wasn't even that bad on reasonably good hardware (but a disaster on more mediocre hardware), but its name became so absurdly toxic that people, both techies and non-techies, were telling each other to avoid Vista for reasons they couldn't even articulate. Microsoft needs to be scared that if they continue insulting enthusiasts with 6700Ks and 7700s while supporting N4000s with BS excuses, Windows 11 "ewaste edition" will be spoken about in the same way and 80% of the installed base of Windows PCs in 2025 will be Windows 10.

 

[mxnerd]

Maybe, maybe not. But I guess I don't see the advantage of wishful thinking? The more anger their PR team sees everywhere, the more likely it is that if the worst case scenario is right, they are going to change their mind. Whereas if people hope for the best and it turns out the worst is what ships at the end of the year, then... what?

Best case scenario, really, there's so much anger that they come out and say "oh no, you misunderstood us, this was only for new OEM systems, don't worry". Whether that is true or just a face saving move, who cares?

Also, it's like they learned nothing from the Vista debacle - a product that IMO wasn't even that bad on reasonably good hardware (but a disaster on more mediocre hardware), but its name became so absurdly toxic that people, both techies and non-techies, were telling each other to avoid Vista for reasons they couldn't even articulate. Microsoft needs to be scared that if they continue insulting enthusiasts with 6700Ks and 7700s while supporting N4000s with BS excuses, Windows 11 "ewaste edition" will be spoken about in the same way and 80% of the installed base of Windows PCs in 2025 will be Windows 10.

Vista is extremely bad, because it's pathetic & painfully slow, and that's a fact. Whoever installed Vista all wanted to throw their machines out of the window.

==

There are some users claimed their 2 years old won't even past the Windows 11 test. So MS just want to upset all those users? I don't think so. And it's quite possible those users did not configure their machines correctly, and they didn't even try to install it.

My Dell 9020 i5 4570 (4th gen CPU and only TPM 1.2) installed Windows 11 without problem but the compatibility test told me I can't.

You just believe what you beloved. I'm not going to argue anymore.

 

[mnewsham]

Not saying this holds water, but the conspiracy theory take I've seen is that because AMD licensed their Zen1 design to china (which only has TPM 1.2), if Microsoft makes TPM 2.0 a hard requirement it forces china to remain on depreciated windows versions, or use their own operating systems, or buy a LOT of replacement hardware from the west (since I don't believe any domestic Chinese silicon currently supports anything beyond TPM 1.2).

I would hope this isn't the only reason, but it wouldn't shock me if this along with the DRM and anti-windows piracy theories are the reason for the TPM 2.0 requirement we're hearing from Microsoft now.

 

[Cronox]

Again, MS try to trick you. All those requirements are for new OEM machines.

Minimum hardware requirements

This topic defines the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 10 and all types of devices or computers designed for this release.

docs.microsoft.com

No.It's the same from Windows 10. They are for all OEM machines from 28 july 2016. They tricked everyone if manufactureres did not comply with the rules, and sold new hardware with "Windows 10 compatible" logo after that date but without TPM 2.0.

Now they should also explain what to do if the rules have not been followed. Who answers now?

Anyone who will be in my situation having a product post July 2016 that does not meet this TPM 2.0 requirement that MS had fixed since 2016,was screwed up. Just because MS didn't clearly warned users in time, about what they intended to do for the future and that this requirement would become necessary in the next OS releases. Users would check it carefully before buying a product and also manufacturers would have had to be just as careful otherwise they would not have sold it. I hope it's clear what I mean.





section 3.7 - page 33
https://download.microsoft.com/download/c/1/5/c150e1ca-4a55-4a7e-94c5-bfc8c2e785c5/Windows 10 Minimum Hardware Requirements.pdf

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Vista is extremely bad, because it's pathetic & painfully slow, and that's a fact. Whoever installed Vista all wanted to throw their machines out of the window.

Main issue with Vista was... ahm... <insert expletive here> poor driver support. Then lack of RAM (painful with 512MB), disk caching making HDD sound like power-drills, and poor IGP performance*. Once cleared of those hurdles, Vista is indistinguishable from 7. In fact, 7 is more Vista SP3 then a new OS.

*Vistas early DWM compositor was/is a mess. The reason everyone is seeing better performance on 7 is because that part is cleaned up significantly.

Not saying this holds water, but the conspiracy theory take I've seen is that because AMD licensed their Zen1 design to china (which only has TPM 1.2), if Microsoft makes TPM 2.0 a hard requirement it forces china to remain on depreciated windows versions, or use their own operating systems, or buy a LOT of replacement hardware from the west (since I don't believe any domestic Chinese silicon currently supports anything beyond TPM 1.2).

I would hope this isn't the only reason, but it wouldn't shock me if this along with the DRM and anti-windows piracy theories are the reason for the TPM 2.0 requirement we're hearing from Microsoft now.

The really sad part is that I wouldn't even be surprised if that was the case. Not anymore.

 

[VivienM]

Vista is extremely bad, because it's pathetic & painfully slow, and that's a fact. Whoever installed Vista all wanted to throw their machines out of the window.

Funny, I didn't have that experience, but I was running Vista on good hardware. I had it on, hmm... an E6600 with 2 gigs of RAM, then 3 gigs of RAM, then reinstalled to go 64-bit and went to 8 gigs of RAM with a 7900 GT, it was tight with 2 gigs of RAM but otherwise worked fine. (Oh, and the first time I tried it, it crashed a lot due to a bad video card, but the card also caused crashes in games in XP. Replacing the card fixed that). I ran the betas on my old 1.9GHz P4 willamette with a 1 gig of RDRAM, an ATI AIW 9800, worked great for a beta that I wasn't using seriously, I presumed the RAM would have been a big issue for serious issue.

My dad had a Vista OEM system from Dell, I still have that box in my closet, it was an E8400 with... I don't remember... how much RAM it originally had. Ran fine. With a few upgrades I later made, I seem to remember that I may have run Windows 10 betas on it before retiring it to the closet.

I even installed it at one point on my laptop, a Dell D610 with a 1.86GHz Pentium M, some ATI graphics that officially had just a little too little memory to be supported, and maxed out RAM (can't remember if that would been 1GB or 2GB?). Ran fine, with Aero glass. What killed that laptop wasn't Vista or 7, it was a loose power jack soldered onto the mobo that I didn't have the skills to fix.

But there was a lot of bad hardware out there. In probably, oh, 2003 or 2004, my aunt got a low end Dell with XP and 128 megs of RAM. Intentionally because the plan was to add more third party RAM. That thing was unusable with the stock 128 megs. And upgrading that thing to Vista would have been an epic fail even after all the RAM added to it.

Vista needed multiple gigs of RAM and GPUs capable of doing the full Aero Glass experience. Most people didn't have that in late 2006.

And actually, this tells you everything about why I'm so angry. Windows 11 is flipping all this around when they allow N4000s and don't allow i7 7700s with 64 gigs of RAM. And then they are going to give some BS story about how recent PCs provide more reliable and consistent performance.

There are some users claimed their 2 years old won't even past the test. So MS just want to upset all those users? I don't think so.

Well, let me ask this - all the off-lease refurb desktops on the market right now are Skylakes or Kaby Lakes. Is it a coincidence that they dropped those systems? I'm sure plenty of people who would otherwise have set up their grandmothers with one of those are now going to be thinking 'grrrr, this thing is going to need replacement in 3 years'.

My guess is that this is intentional because there are a lot of perfectly competent PCs out there, especially desktops (laptops are more likely to fail due to batteries or other issues), that frankly could keep running forever at the current pace of software development. They want to put a nice big fat 2025 end date on those PCs so that people run to the store and buy new (potentially slower) ones. Wouldn't even surprise me if they had nasty little popups starting in 2022 or 2023 about how crappy your PC is and how it's missing all the latest and greatest features because it won't run Windows 11 and you really need to buy a new one. And by 2024 those popups will talk about all the malware your aging PC is about to become vulnerable to...

 

[VivienM]

Main issue with Vista was... ahm... <insert expletive here> poor driver support. Then lack of RAM (painful with 512MB), disk caching making HDD sound like power-drills, and poor IGP performance*. Once cleared of those hurdles, Vista is indistinguishable from 7. In fact, 7 is more Vista SP3 then a new OS.

And the BS about the logo program where they had TWO Vista-ready logo programs and somehow accepted i915 graphics in the lower category, I think as a personal favour to Intel. (I feel like emails and documents about that decision came out in later litigation about it) But everybody knew that the DWM and new graphics engine couldn't run on an i915.

Great idea, stick a "Windows Vista Capable" sticker on things that aren't actually capable of running Vista passably well, then put a "Windows Vista Premium Ready" sticker on things that might actually run it okay. As if anybody non-techie is supposed to know the difference.

 

[deustroop]

MS honchos call this " Culling the Herd". Can't serve'em all -type-of mentality i guess.

 

[mxnerd]

The most funny thing is the Heath Check tool claimed that my Dell 4th gen CPU i5 4570 (TPM 1.2) PC can't run Windows 11 while I ran the tool inside Windows 11

 

[mnewsham]

The most funny thing is the Heath Check tool claimed that my Dell 4th gen CPU i5 4570 (TPM 1.2) PC can't run Windows 11 while I ran the tool inside Windows 11

To be fair, dev builds have a history of allowing non-supported hardware to run them without issue, but upon retail release, it might not be so forgiving.

Enjoy it for now, but don't be too shocked if retail is another thing entirely.

 

[deustroop]

Announcement:

Upgrade to the New Windows 11 OS | Microsoft

Looks good, and apparently they said this which is good news:

"As Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay noted in today’s announcement, the overall idea behind the design is to make you feel “an incredible sense of calm,” but at the same time, the Windows team has also worked to make it a lot faster. Windows Updates, for example, are supposed to be 40 percent faster, but Panay also noted that starting up your machine and even browsing should feel much faster."

I don't like the touchy feelie look that I've seen so far-- even in the face of an improvement men would like , that it is" faster". The campaign is all feminine in fact, with floating whimsey curtains, soft beautiful colours and not a hard edge in sight.This is not a Bill Gates project.
Lets hear Panay again on his objective here: it's to make us feel “an incredible sense of calm ".WoW.
I get that feeling just before I go to sleep. So we will all go to sleep?

Think about what all that calm would do. Cure crime in Toronto ? LOL

Ah now we're into mystical feelings ! Unreal stuff.

Unfortunately the marketing design is more irritating than it should be and too ZenYoga for me, an Eastern design perhaps but fully contrary to the kick-ass leading edge OS that Windows has been over its history.And still is. Start me the fuck up!.

 

[mxnerd]

One annoying thing about Windows 11 is that it seems the taskbar is locked. I have no problem with that if there is only one monitor.

With dual monitors however I only get one taskbar on one monitor and can't move it around, yet Win10 taskbar is duplicated on every monitor.

Anyone found ways to emulate what Win10 taskbar can do?

 

[amenx]

I think I'm beginning to see the reason why MS is really doing this: Money, profit! They only charge for new Windows licenses, not for upgrades. The majority of PC users have systems older than Intel Core gen 8 and Ryzen 2000 series. So there is no profit from them. Users who upgrade to new machines will have to buy a Win 11 license.

 

[VivienM]

I think I'm beginning to see the reason why MS is really doing this: Money, profit! They only charge for new Windows licenses, not for upgrades. The majority of PC users have systems older than Intel Core gen 8 and Ryzen 2000 series. So there is no profit from them. Users who upgrade to new machines will have to buy a Win 11 license.

Yup. Which is silly - if they wanted revenue, why not go back to charging for upgrades like they used to?

Here is the irony: they made Windows 10 free because they wanted to get people off 7/8/8.1 so they could stop supporting 7. This worked wonderfully. Now, they're recreating the same problem they used to have of people keeping old Windows versions until they replaced the hardware - there is going to be a massive installed base of Win10 PCs that... can't even be upgraded to a supported OS with a $129/$179 retail box upgrade and that people aren't going to want to spend $1500+ to replace. Oops.

They could easily do a hybrid model, too - if you have an 8th gen core or newer system, you get a free upgrade, but if you have an older system, hand over your credit card. I feel like most people with 6700s and 7700s would rather hand over the credit card than i) junk the box, or ii) stay stuck on Win10 until 2025 and then junk the box.

(The other problem with this - how many people are going to replace perfectly good PCs with low-end junk from Worst Buy figuring 'oh, a brand new PC today must be better than my 8-year old dinosaur', then the performance will be dreadful, they will hate Windows 11, and then say 'well if I need to spend $2000 to have a computer that actually works, I'll just buy a Mac')

 

[VirtualLarry]

Right on target, @VivienM !

 

[Muadib]

Me too. All I did was run MBR2GPT and switched the BIOS over without reinstalling.

Sadly for me, this is the first I've heard of MBR2GPT. It wasn't that bad for me, as I have a backup of that drive. Thanks for the info though!

 

[mikeymikec]

I think I'm beginning to see the reason why MS is really doing this: Money, profit! They only charge for new Windows licenses, not for upgrades.

That explanation doesn't fit with the situation IMO because Win11 apparently will get feature updates every year that it's supported, seemingly. What's the point in that if profit is the goal?

The pre-Win10 release model fits your explanation a lot better IMO.

I'm not sure why MS went down the Win10 route let alone Win11. I'm inclined to believe that they made at least one mistake with making Win10 "the last version of Windows":

1: 'Windows As A Service' did not work out to be the new revenue stream they expected. I think they hoped for significant Windows Store revenue and I bet it hasn't materialised (at least relative to what they hoped).

2: As computer hardware gets weirder and device types/roles merge, is that really the time to set a lot of Windows in stone? With the pre-Win10 model, you get x years support, you pretty much know that if your hardware worked with Windows X on day 1, it'll work come year 10. With the Win10 model, a feature update may unexpectedly brick your Windows install and you simply can't go beyond a certain version. It's a messy scenario which requires knowledgeable intervention. Or you may think you'll get ten years support and get cut loose after 5 with a "you can't upgrade" message because you have weird hardware.

I think Windows 11 is simply a marketing tactic. OS X gets fancy new update names and not very often, and AFAIK (which isn't much about OS X) more generally notable stuff goes into their OS updates, something to talk about (and drive hardware sales which obv Apple controls). Win10 gets update numbers and all the freaking time, which are boring. I think Win11 is a PR move to give a greater impression that Windows is going somewhere.

I think Win11 might be a move back to the pre-Win10 release model, maybe with a few feature updates thrown in. "Feature updates" sound better than "service packs", but they're basically the same thing.

It's not all bad though, I think Win10's feature update system and promises that it would be the last version of Windows has boosted my company's revenue