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Microsoft has had six years to prepare for the launch of Windows 11, but the company is still struggling to explain its new hardware requirements.
Windows 11 will officially support Intel 8th Gen Coffee Lake or Zen 2 CPUs and up, leaving behind millions of PCs that were sold during the launch of Windows 10.
Microsoft’s decision to force Windows 11 users into TPM, Secure Boot, and more comes at a pivotal moment for Windows.
Microsoft’s changes mean that some PCs that are only three years old will be excluded from the Windows 11 upgrade.
“Windows 11 does not apply the hardware-compliance check for virtualized instances either during setup or upgrade,” notes a Microsoft document (PDF) on minimum hardware requirements for Windows 11.
Microsoft is allowing testers to access Windows 11 on a wide range of hardware during the preview, but it’s planning to apply these new restrictions at launch. »