In another episode of "I altered the deal, pray I don't alter it any further," Microsoft has decided to close a path that allowed us to skip the TPM module requirement when installing Windows 11. The user "Bob Pony," known for his MSEdge Tweaker project, discovered that the latest Insider build 27686 rejects the command "setup /product server", which disables TPM and RAM checks. While this doesn't affect the stable 24H2 build, we all know it will arrive to the normal editions sooner or later...
My situation is simple: I have a Ryzen 7 1800X processor. Microsoft decided that an octa-core processor with 16 threads and a 4 GHz turbo is not compatible with Windows 11 because it lacks the necessary security features. This extends to millions of users around the globe with similar components. Technically, nothing prevents us from returning to Windows 10 and taking advantage of its extended support until October 2025... but in Redmond they seem very comfortable with this conflict. The latest example? The company blocked a TPM bypass in Insider build 27686.
The latest Windows 11 Insider build loses a TPM bypass
The user "Bob Pony," developer of MSEdge Tweaker, recently discovered that the command "setup /product server", used in in-place upgrades to skip TPM and RAM checks, stopped working in Windows 11 Insider 10.0.27686.1000. This adds to the so-called "PopCnt restriction" that Microsoft activated in February, preventing Windows 11 installation on computers with old processors like Intel Core2Duo, and AMD Athlon models from the same generation. Obviously, nobody expects those computers to be useful in daily life, but many enthusiasts like to experiment with their hardware, and Redmond eliminated that possibility.
Now, users who want to install Windows 11 24H2 on "unsupported" hardware can still do so without too much trouble, but the question is not how this new block will reach the stable editions, but when. Fortunately, there are other alternatives.
Source: Tom's Hardware
