Microsoft ultimately would seem to be acquiring significant (very well, serious-ish) about urging consumers working Home windows 11 on unsupported components to upgrade their methods — or downgrade their edition of Home windows.
Considering that the January 2023 Patch Tuesday update, consumers managing the production model of Home windows 11 2H22 on unsupported hardware have noted, through the Windows Responses Hub and Microsoft’s community forums, observing a watermark that states “Procedure prerequisites not fulfilled. Go to Configurations to master a lot more” in the decreased appropriate corner of their desktop.
“Likely to configurations and clicking the “Discover more” hyperlink provides me the to the Microsoft internet site conversing about installing 11 on units with procedure prerequisites un-fulfilled. It also indicates reverting again to 10 and that you can only do this 10 times soon after upgrading,” reviews one user on the Microsoft Group discussion boards (opens in new tab). Another person on the Home windows opinions hub stories they purchased their Personal computer with Windows 11 preinstalled, and are only now observing this concept.
Microsoft initially demoed this watermark ‘feature’ for Windows Insider testers final March, so it is not far too surprising that it can be lastly produced its way to the manufacturing develop. Not all customers are looking at it, having said that, so Microsoft may perhaps be screening it on choose accounts or rolling it out slowly (or both).
Windows 11 has some incredibly rigorous minimum amount technique needs, for the reason that it calls for TPM 2. security. As a outcome, Windows 11 is only officially supported on CPUs equivalent to, or newer than, Intel’s 8th-Gen (and some 7th-Gen) and AMD’s 2nd-Gen processors. It also demands 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, bare minimum. If your Laptop meets these prerequisites and you happen to be receiving this concept, you may need to have to allow TPM 2. in your BIOS.
At the minute, it seems to be like unsupported programs will only have to deal with a mildly-annoying watermark, but this could be the initially action towards extra drastic steps. Microsoft has warned that it will disable updates on unsupported methods (though this clearly has nonetheless to occur to fruition, as you’ll only get the watermark if you install the newest update).
So, just go invest in a new CPU (suggests Microsoft). Or uninstall Windows 11 and downgrade to Home windows 10, which you can do if you happen to be within the 10-day window. Or cover the concept with a registry edit (or a lighter-colored wallpaper).