Hacker News Reader

Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

The whole fake TPM requirement seems very un-Microsoft to me, to the point that I question if they were paid off by hardware manufacturers to sell new machines.

Prior to Windows 11, they would at least try to run Windows on basically any device that wanted to. I have been using Windows since 3.1 and the only thing that ever held a computer back was the architecture move from 16 bit to 32 bit. My 286 couldn’t run Windows 95, but it was already painfully underpowered at the time.

In contrast, I have a pretty powerful 8-core Ryzen desktop with 64gb of RAM, well beyond the capabilities of any cheap Windows 11 computer from a big box, and yet Windows 11 just blanket tells me it’s not supported… for reasons. Could I hack it to get it to run? Yes. There’s no legitimate reason I should have to though.

I don’t know why they would do this other than being bribed.

View on HN

> I don’t know why they would do this other than being bribed.

I wouldn't rule that out, but I do think there are other reasons too. Like the bulk of corporate decisions, it's probably justified by something like, "the security of our users is important and without a TPM we can't guarantee integrity of the OS <blah> <blah>". The fact that it also nets a whole lot of hardware sales (which flow directly to MS in the form of Windows licenses, and some first party hardware sales) is of course also a business factor in the decision, but that's not one they would publically acknowledge and they would probably avoid saying it among themselves too because that's the current business fashion of the day.

So I think a more fair sum would be: "There are some real 'benefits' to users to have a TPM, and that's a convenient vehicle for enforcing a policy that generates additional revenue"

As always: If it makes sense money wise then that’s probably the reason.

They seem to be using the TPM for Office 365 licensing as well [1]. Presumably this will move to a requirement around the same time Windows 10 support ends.

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/activa...

So you'll be forced to get a TMP-device just to use M365, a piece of software you already use on another device for years?

I imagine Windows 11 without a TPM will be treated like a rooted Android device. It may work, but many apps, Office 365 in this case, will enforce their own TPM requirements.

So, let me see. Office 365 won't run on my perfectly-good machine.

That means that Office 365 will have to get the boot.

As an 'oldie', I can remember when every office computer had to have .doc capability. I haven't seen a .doc file (including .docx) for years. Everybody uses .pdf these days. Why? Simply because there's no bullshit about reading or writing .pdf files.

To me it seems perfectly in line with their campaign of creating a walled garden by pushing for UWP apps (remember the boycott by epic and Valve pushing the Steam machines using Linux as an alternative).

I could say exactly the opposite: it's been always like this, there was even a popular saying about it[0]. I don't know if there is monetary compensation but there might be other agreements and motivations in place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law

> The whole fake TPM requirement seems very un-Microsoft to me

Then you don't know about Palladium, a/k/a the Next Generation Secure Computing Base, which Microsoft started developing in 1997. It's explicit goal was digital restrictions management. They co-founded the TCPA in 1999 to develop the TPM hardware spec.

I think probably the issues with your desktop is that the TPM is turned off in the mobo settings. Windows does an awful job at this by not explaining it at all, but you can go turn it on and windows will probably work again.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com