Microsoft is tightening its Windows 11 restrictions - but hackers swoop in to save the day, again

3 weeks ago 12

A hacker's hand in a black leather glove holding an access key and emerging through a laptop screen

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The Microsoft Windows 11 24H2 update dropped on October 1, 2024, and with it came the need for another workaround to address persistent hardware upgrade issues.

Since Windows 11 was originally released in 2021, Microsoft has required users to run its latest OS on a machine with Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0, and with a sufficiently new 64-bit CPU supporting Secure Boot. Microsoft must be aware that users are unhappy with Windows 11’s strict hardware requirements, but the company has only become more inflexible.

Users have already been using creative solutions to run Windows 11 on their machines. One popular method involves the 'Rufus' utility software, which can be used to make bootable OS disks. Rufus circumvents Microsoft’s checks by the simple expedient of replacing the code used to do them – contained in the file appraiserres.dll – with an empty file.

It’s this particular method that no longer works, resulting in users running Windows 11 on older machines being left unable to install the 24H2 update.

Thankfully, Rufus developer Pete Bard dug deep into his hacker’s toolbox and pulled out a new solution. If you want to update right now, you can head to GitHub and follow the instructions, which involve a set of registry fixes. Future versions of Rufus will contain code to do this automatically.

Rufus to the rescue?

This is all great if tinkering with Windows 11's innards is your thing, but the average user is probably not feeling too great about how difficult and inconvenient that is for them.

At least the official method for upgrading systems appears untouched. If your PC is using Secure Boot, UEFI, and has a TPM 2.0, upgrading to Windows 11 should be relatively pain-free. Additionally, if you already have Windows 11 on your PC there’s no need for any new compatibility upgrades, so your system should continue to receive updates with no problems.

Microsoft seems hell-bent on making a huge chunk of its users miserable, because introducing such strict hardware checks, especially for TPM is just making things unnecessarily hard for many of its users. Sure, TPM and secure boot add more security, but perfectly functioning older hardware shouldn’t have to be excluded from receiving the most basic Windows updates.

The fact that Microsoft seems so hellbent on forcing users to buy new hardware when they have perfectly working older systems is another example of how Microsoft seems to prove again and again that it is not customer-focused enough and wants to dictate what its users can or can’t do with their own systems. Add the growing mountain of e-waste that we'll have to deal with eventually, and you've got a perfect storm of upset Windows users.