Is Microsoft cutting security updates for ‘unsupported’ Windows 11 PCs?

Microsoft’s strict compatibility requirements for Windows 11 mean that a significant number of PC owners — hundreds of millions, probably — are prevented from upgrading their Windows 10 PCs to the newer operating system using normal techniques.

Meanwhile, the company has published documentation for how to bypass those compatibility checks and upgrade anyway, while warning that following those instructions means you won’t be entitled to receive updates in the future.

Also: Yes, you can upgrade that old PC to Windows 11, even if Microsoft says no. These readers proved it

Beginning in mid-2024, that warning now appears as a frightening dialog box during Windows Setup on any PC where you’ve edited the registry to perform an upgrade while bypassing the CPU and TPM compatibility checks. To emphasize, this is a technique that Microsoft has documented as an official workaround.

I’ve heard from a half-dozen readers who were alarmed and uncertain whether they should proceed after they saw this warning. Here’s what it looks like:

This warning raises the question: If you upgrade your old, “incompatible” PC to Windows 11, are you really in danger of getting cut off from monthly security updates some day?

Allow me to answer that question with another question: Have you ever heard of FUD? The acronym, short for “fear, uncertainty, and doubt”, has been around a long time, but it was popularized in the 1970s as a way of describing how the giant IBM Corporation discouraged its customers from even considering competing products.

FUD is a classic marketing technique used when your customer is contemplating a switch to a competing product and there’s no good technical argument to make against that choice. It’s odd, though, to see an example like this, in which the giant Microsoft Corporation is using FUD to discourage customers from installing one of its own products.

Also: What is a TPM, and why does Windows 11 require one?

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