Microsoft blocking your Windows 11 upgrade? This newly released tool can get the job done

Microsoft really, really, Actually 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 Trying to install Windows 11 on a computer with a CPU from 2018 or earlier, you receive an error message, with a suggestion that you should probably buy a new PC.

The result, of course, is a completely predictable game of cat and mouse between Redmond and the Windows enthusiast community. Owners of those “incompatible” PCs find ways to overcome those limitationsand Redmond Find ways to make those workarounds more difficult.

Also: Microsoft discourages Windows 11 upgrades for ‘incompatible’ PCs, but there’s a workaround

With the public release of the latest feature update for Windows 11, 24H2 versionMicrosoft has tightened the compatibility checks that Windows Setup runs when performing upgrades. Those new restrictions blocked a widely used solution, which uses the open source Rufus utility to create installation media that allows Windows 11 upgrades on incompatible hardware.

The new restrictions lasted less than a week, as the community discovered that you could get around Microsoft’s compatibility blocks by manually entering a series of commands to adjust the registry. And now Rufus developer Pete Batard has released a new beta version of the utility that automates that process.

On the surface, Rufus 4.6 beta looks no different from its predecessor. When you select the option to skip Windows 11 hardware compatibility testing, it replaces the official Windows 11 compatibility evaluator, Appraiserres.dll, with a 0-byte file, just like the previous version there; and it offers the same number of additional customization options. But to get around the 24H2 limitations, it does some additional tricks of its own.

The most notable change is the creation of installation media which renames the official Windows Setup program, Setup.exe, to Setup.dll and adds a new custom program named Setup.exe. It also adds a $OEM$ subfolder to the Sources folder, containing additional subfolders and a file.

Also: How to upgrade Windows Home edition to Pro (and why you want to)

Double-clicking the newly created Setup.exe file produces this permission dialog box, which shows that the file is a Windows Setup Wrapper, signed by Akeo ConsultingRufus’ parent company.

So what does that file do? You can see for yourself by check out the code on GitHub. Running that wrapper makes the necessary registry edits to bypass compatibility checking, then calls the native Windows Setup program.

As Batard notes in the code comments, this approach may raise some doubts.

Obviously, the fact that we “injected” a setup executable might make people uncomfortable about the possibility that we could use this vector as a malware vector, which is also why we ensures that the file we sign and embed in Rufus will be created with GitHub Actions and can be authenticated against tampering via SHA-256 authentication…

in one private discussionBatard emphasized that “Rufus only implements the official bypass measures that Microsoft itself has put in place and does not take the over-the-top approach of disabling all hardware checks.”

Also: Windows 11 24H2 update encountered a file scanning error

That approach, he adds, would provide a level of security that installations using these bypasses would not be disabled in the future:

Rufus is working within Microsoft’s framework, with the detours that Microsoft has included in the installer, and therefore, as has been the case since the release of Windows 11, I hope that the detours that Microsoft allow [will] does not cause the machine to not work…

The new solution will succeed with almost any PC capable of running Windows 10. Some oddball configurations, including very old CPUs from the Windows Vista era, may be blocked due to limitations inherent in the way Windows 11 operation and is not subject to compatibility. request.

So, for now at least, you can once again use the Rufus installer to perform Windows 11 upgrades on unsupported hardware.

Your move, Microsoft.