Eliana Willis

The latest Rufus release replaces the Windows Setup executable with this wrapper.  Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNETMicrosoft really, really, really doesn’t want you to upgrade your old Windows 10 PC to Windows 11. That’s the logic behind the strict hardware compatibility requirements the company imposed when it launched the new operating system in 2021. If you try to install Windows 11 on a computer with a CPU from 2018 or earlier, you get an error message, along with a suggestion that maybe you should buy a new PC.The result, of course, is a thoroughly predictable cat-and-mouse game between Redmond and the Windows enthusiast community. The owners of those “incompatible” PCs find ways to work around those restrictions, and Redmond finds a way to make those workarounds more difficult.Also: Microsoft cracks down on Windows 11 upgrades for ‘incompatible’ PCs, but there’s a workaroundWith the public release of the most recent feature update to Windows 11, version 24H2, Microsoft tightened the compatibility checks that Windows Setup runs when performing an upgrade. Those new restrictions blocked one widely used workaround, which used the open-source Rufus utility to create installation media that allows Windows 11 upgrades on incompatible hardware.The new restrictions lasted for less than one week, as the community discovered that you could work around Microsoft’s compatibility blocks by manually entering a series of commands to tweak the registry. And now the developer of Rufus, Pete Batard, has released a new beta version of the utility that automates that process. More