400M PCs can't run Win 11: PIRG petitions Microsoft to extend Win 10 life | Hacker News Reader

400M PCs can't run Win 11: PIRG petitions Microsoft to extend Win 10 life

theregister.com

30 pointsvkaku49 comments

Last night I attempted to install Windows 11 on a new laptop, released 2022. The installer doesn't allow you to continue without connecting to the Internet first, and Windows doesn't have the right WiFi drivers built in.

I'm lazy, so I installed Fedora instead

I know this isn't precisely related, but these anti-patterns add up. It does not feel good to be a Microsoft customer.

This is an exceptional blocker with newer laptops that lack RJ45. Linux is the only way.

There's a bypass, but it's not officially documented fwict. Some tech news outlets have reported on it, though. Here's a Microsoft answers post documenting it:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/all/set-up...

I ran windows update last night on a modern laptop and now it just blue screens instead of starting.

I will probably just install fedora on it too. I seem to have nothing but unwanted surprises on windows.

That's the main reason that made me switch to Linux. A Windows 10 update caused bluescreens on boot and reinstalling didn't help because the official installation image already included the faulty update. After months of bugs and annoyances and then that I had enough of spending a weekend on fixing the system.

Didn't clicking "join a domain" work? It let's you create an account without any fuss

How long until they scrap on-premises AD and try to force companies to use Azure?

You can skip it. Shift+F10 and type oobe\bypassnro

I wonder what is going on here, market wise. Microsoft displays one anti-consumer move after another. Classic monopolist behaviour.

Meanwhile, people literally prefer buying a new PC, tolerate the ads, tolerate the disrespect for their preferences, take the risk of cloud providers closing accounts and taking their life history with it.

The PC market seems ready for a shake up. I wish BEOS started today.

Well, a lack of competition. The other main players are Linux and macOS; Linux projects' open source nature stunts public appeal and Apple only cares to appeal to a small segment of the market.

> Linux projects' open source nature stunts public appeal.

Can you eloborate ?

IMO Desktop Linux's lack of GUI apps stunts public appeal.

(I use fedora btw)

The public market consists of a wide variety of people. From computer experts, to grandmas who barely know what email is. Linux will never work for those grandma types, whereas closed source stuff like Mac OS does all those complicated things for you (but you have no control over). Grandmas like that, computer experts don't.

Now who do you think the public is mostly made up of? People who fall closer to computer experts or grandmas?

Open source projects are made and managed by software developers. Not by graphic designers, not by UI/UX experts. Developers will make something that works, that scratches their itch. But it can take years if not decades for a project to actually look polished, be easy for a casual computer user to use. For most open source projects, the way to contribute is "make a pull request", which usually involves more programming than a design person can or wants to contribute in order to make things look good. For a project to be user friendly, it needs people besides software developers working on it.

See, for example, Mastodon and Lemmy. They're excellent federated social media, they should replace Twitter and reddit. But I heard someone say the word "Federated" at a bar last night while describing them, and I pegged them instantly as a software developer. Federation? Choosing an instance? Casual users glaze over. Without a dead simple onboarding process, they will never replace corporate social media.

As a long time Ubuntu user, I get annoyed at the way they've moved towards kiddy proofing a number of things, but I can tell they're doing their best to make it usable by more casual computer users. It's still not 100% there, but it's way closer than it has been, and it's one of the most user friendly distros.

The only things stunting Linux's appeal are:

1) Poor support from OEMs and system integrators for preinstalled copies

2) Bad support for standalone application installation outside of curated package repositories.

1 is an eternal problem that I'm not sure how to solve, but 2 is already being solved by things like flatpak.

I have a 2019 Microsoft Surface laptop which cost a pretty penny (bought it for the wife). It doesn’t support Windows 11, I think because of TPM.

With end of life at 2025, I would have gotten about same life from a Chromebook which famously have expiration dates, for a fraction of the cost.

Is there really no way to work around the missing hardware with virtualization? Apple supports processor changes for several version (I have an Intel and an M2 MacBook both running same software). What is the deal? Forget extending windows 10 — get Windows 11 working somehow.

Are you sure its really not supported? You might have to enable the software TPM in the BIOS but if it has an 8th+ Gen Intel CPU as a 2019/2018 Surface Laptop should, you should be able to. Only the first Gen Surface laptop with 7th gen CPUs are technically unsupported.

Its also not hard to bypass the TPM requirement.

How do you bypass when upgrading? I don’t want to buy another W11 license nor pirate.

I’ll end up on Linux, but my wife will never touch it again.

You can do it by making an ISO with Rufus by changing the "image option".

I'm in the same boat, with a 2020 Surface Go. It's not a powerful machine but works just fine for taking notes and light browsing. I'm fine with it being stuck on Windows 10 - 11 would probably make it unusably slow - but when I purchased it I reasonably expected it to have similar longevity to the then 6 year old iPad it replaced.

The Surface Go 2 which came out in may 2020 can be updated to Windows 11.

This is a Surface Go 1, which can not.

So a 2018 Surface Go.

Which I purchased in 2020, at a time when it was the newest model available.

Saying "2020 Surface Go" implies the 2020 model. Which yours isn't the model from 2020, it's the model from 2018.

Which is why it's a lot better to use the actual product names instead of just the year you purchased it. If I buy a 1950s car in 2023 I probably shouldn't call it a 2023 car.

Maybe but when you are buying hardware from the software manufacturer, it would stand to reason to have a reasonable lifespan.

2018-2025 is seven years of support. Apple supports iPads for like 5-9 years. I'd like for it to be longer, but it's not like Microsoft is being some kind of outlier here in the midrange tablet market.

Both Surface Laptops that would have been sold in 2019 support Windows 11. You might need to enable something in the BIOS, but the Surface Laptop 2 and 3 are listed as supporting 11.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/which-surface-de...

Okay, so I found the receipt and it’s 2018.

I still feel somewhat indignant since my 2012 MacBook lasted until 2022 and my Chromebook goes 8 years

Windows 11 does not think my ThreadRipper 1950x is good enough for it. I wonder which one I'll do without.

Its not like Windows 11 has to be supported. This is effectively a 400M device niche that will open up, not sure how thats a bad thing. People shouldnt use Windows, its not that great.

> This is effectively a 400M device niche that will open up, not sure how thats a bad thing.

The Android fragmentation problem suggests that no market will open up, and the 400M pool of devices running Windows 10 will simply continue using an operating system that won't receive security updates.

> People shouldnt use Windows, its not that great.

If you are a Windows user who uses Windows software, what better option is there?

> If you are a Windows user who uses Windows software

then keep doing that, if thats productive. But once that turns into "If you are a (oudated, unsecure) Windows user who uses (outdated, unsecure) Windows software", there is an argument to be made for someone to make an alternative that is easy to transition to. I dont think its on the users, I'm saying this should be seen as opening up a niche and take the opportunity to exploit this market weakness.

> (...) there is an argument to be made for someone to make an alternative that is easy to transition to.

Again, what better option is there?

You're the one quick to claim "People shouldnt use Windows, its not that great." What should they use then?

Fedora, obviously.

Perhaps this is evidence that markets are not always efficient...

> 400M pool of devices running Windows 10 will simply continue using an operating system that won't receive security updates.

This.

Then I guess this will be the year of the Linux desktop…

Real headline: 400M machines have unpatchable hardware bugs caused by Intel's incompetence that have to be destroyed/removed from prod before the end of their intended lifespan; Microsoft considers it a liability to keep those machines in use.

There are patches that work around it (albeit with a performance cost), and new hardware bugs that will be discovered in future.

There's absolutely no reason why the company that still maintains backwards compatibility for Windows 9x software can't support hardware from 2015.

This.

Spectre and meltdown, while academically intriguing, don't really matter in practice for consumer devices.

Every kernel I have booted has had mitigations=off.

Especially considering the mount of electronic waste that 400M of PCs represents. I think this should be one argument authorities should use against Microsoft when it makes all this hardware obsolete with a software update.

If there are software workarounds that can prolong the use of that hardware, even at the cost of performance, they should be liable (and maybe subsidized) to implement them.

That's a red herring. Win11 supports cpus with lots of bugs. Imagine what the errata document for the Snapdragon CPUs looks like.

Afaik it's mostly about TPM 2.0 and virtualization support.

If people are happy or stuck with their fully working machines, it should not be up to Microsoft to arbitrarily turn them into e-waste.

What’s the basis for requiring Microsoft to either/both: support them in Win11 or continue Win10 support beyond the timeline they published ages ago?

I do hope they do offer a practical path here, but I disagree that they should be able to be forced to do so.

Users who are happy with those machines can continue to use them as-agreed.

They don't have to keep supporting Windows 10 but they knowingly decided to cut support for 400M devices because of some arbitrary hardware features, and that's unreasonable imho.

Is there somewhere I can read about these bugs?

I'm far from an expert, but I'm pretty sure they're referring to Spectre and Meltdown exploits: https://meltdownattack.com/

I had a 4790K which was vulnerable to basically everything and while I'm sure the patches had a noticeable impact in benchmarks I couldn't notice much during regular use. So yes, I blame Microsoft.

A linked article from El Reg (2021) also mentions a TPM 2.0 module as required:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/28/microsoft_windows_11_...

So there may be a good # of systems lacking that but otherwise fully functional.

CPU bugs or vulnerabilities hardly ever prevent running a newer OS. Never mind that those may have been patched or mitigated in the meantime by BIOS or microcode updates.

So imho this is just forced upgrading (as usual). "Buy new PC, get new OS". Hopefully this crap drives more users to Linux or *BSD.

Yet those 400m machines have been happily running this entire time?

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