windows 11 looks really good but
compatibility
looks pretty bad
[Music]
microsoft's windows 11 event got off to
a pretty
rocky start their internal streaming
platform crashed and nobody could watch
it on their own systems
and microsoft pushed people towards
their twitter streams or restreams over
on youtube
but that is not what we are here to talk
about today because while windows 11
is bringing a lot to the table and
honestly i'm pretty excited about the os
the story behind compatibility with
windows 11
has been a mess and it's only getting
worse and there's still a lot of
confusion
and we just kind of got to break this
down to what microsoft has said
and now microsoft has already changed
things up a couple times so first off
there was confusion on the windows 11
landing page this is like microsoft.com
windows 11. it's not exactly that but
like their primary landing page
microsoft said hey you need tpm 2.0
which is a trusted module on the
motherboard
that says it's basically storing like
cryptography keys it's a part of a
security mechanism now
a lot of people kind of freaked out
about this because they thought hey like
what if my device doesn't have tpm how
do i know and everything else
this primarily impacted people who had
built custom rigs
but that being said most chips and i
mean most chips
already have this functionality and so
tpm sort of caught like the brunt of the
news
and a lot of people were thinking like
oh man this is screwing me up rightfully
so because that seemed to be the lowest
common denominator but it really wasn't
so much so in fact actually
the pricing of tpm chips especially on
ebay and a couple listings i went and
looked at
went from anywhere from like 22 up to a
hundred dollars as scalpers effectively
trying to make money off of people who
are now buying external tpm chips
to then plug into their motherboard if
it supports it but that's not really the
problem that's not the root of the
problem as we learn more
the root of the problem is actually
microsoft and what appears to be an
artificial limitation now they initially
said
uh on their documents page which we'll
talk about here in a second
that you needed an 8th gen or newer cpu
but this is a problem microsoft was
actually in conflict with itself because
on that same
documents page it actually said you
needed a tpm chip of
version 1.2 or better as opposed to
their landing page which says you needed
2.0 or better
microsoft had this weird terminology and
it's maybe not weird internally but they
have what they call a hard floor
and a soft floor and the soft floor was
1.2
tpm and you effectively needed a cpu
that was one gigahertz with two cores or
faster to be able to support windows 11
but if your chip didn't quite have that
and more specifically where most people
were running it
into issues was initially the tpm issue
you could
work through it right and more
specifically if you had an older chip
such as myself like a seventh generation
chip
there was what was called a soft floor
which we all interpreted to mean that
microsoft would not officially recommend
that you could run the os
but you could you could work around it
after tweeting out that
i said hey microsoft you have two
versions of what are the minimum sex one
says tpm 2.0
the other one says 1.2 they went back
and updated their microsoft documents
page to say okay it's actually 2.0
with some vernacular also saying that
you need a one gigahertz chip with two
cores or more and then they
link to a bunch of list of cpus for
intel and amd
now this created more confusion because
now we've already had a revision
to what was going to be the baseline
requirements for windows 11. if you're
not
following me here basically microsoft
came out and said hey here's what the
baseline is
then they had a separate document says
it's not really that if you have these
things it'll probably work and then they
went back and said okay if you have
those things that will probably work
we're going to make it so you don't work
and then a conversation on twitter with
steve dispenza who is the vp of pm of
microsoft endpoint manager and windows
commercial
came out and said and i asked him in
very clear language very clear language
if your cpu is not on the intel
or amd list that microsoft has specified
windows 11 will not run and that was the
exact vernacular that he said yes
if your cpu is not on one of these
approved lists
you are in trouble because it's not
going to run it but the chaos doesn't
end there because it sounded like okay
if you're not on this list you're not
going to get upgraded to windows 11
but what chips are on these lists well
first off there's some intel
atom chips which are just like bottom of
the barrel but more specifically and i
suspect for people listening to this
video
there's a lot of people who have
high-end chips from a couple generations
ago
specifically these seventh generation
intel chips
have support for tpm 2.0 and they are
also modern chips
imagine this i this box that i am
recording this podcast on right now or
this video
is a core i7 7700k with
i believe 32 gigs or it might have 16
but i'm pretty sure 32 gigs of ram
will not be allowed to run windows 11.
worse than that
based on the vernacular that was used on
twitter by steve
he said that if it's not on the list it
won't run well my box upstairs my
primary workstation is a
7900x which has 10 cores and
20 threads it's running an rtx 2070
super
32 gigs of ram will not be able to run
windows 11
which makes no sense if a little dinky
intel atom chip can do it
then my two powerhouse boxes definitely
should be able to do it too
microsoft has promised that they're
coming out with an updated blog post
that will explain
why magically the 7th gen chips cannot
be able to run
windows 11 but it gets even worse than
that microsoft has a pc
health check application which got off
to a rocky start because that's where
the tpm madness came from because a lot
of people have tpm 2.0 but it wasn't
enabled so you're failing it checks and
so everybody will search and figure out
how to enable it once you enable it
then hopefully you should pass but
that's sort of not where the chaos ends
because then microsoft updated the
application to show you exactly why you
cannot pass
now if we take what was said on twitter
where if your if your cpu
is not in this specified list it will
not be able to run windows 11
then it should not pass the health check
app but that's not true
my 7 900 xbox upstairs is not on
microsoft's list because it's 7th
generation
the 7900x shouldn't be able to run
windows 11 and yet it passes the health
check
app and says yes you absolutely can run
windows 11 on this machine
so already microsoft is in conflict with
its clear language that if it's not on
this list it won't run but their
dedicated application that says it will
run is throwing up error messages
because
obviously not the app isn't throwing up
error message but like in my brain i'm
just
like all right am i updating this stuff
or what's going on so it gets a little
bit more frothy than that because there
is an
insider program from microsoft and they
they put in some very bold language and
i'm just going to kind of lead it
read it here it says from the windows
insider blog
while we recommend that all pcs meet the
full hardware requirements for windows
11
we are allowing some limited exceptions
as we apply these new restrictions
all windows insiders who have already
been installing builds
from the dev channel which is their
their closest ring think alpha
potentially even before beta
on their pcs through june 24 21 21
will be allowed to continue installing
windows 11 insider preview builds
even if their pc doesn't meet the
minimum hardware requirements
so what microsoft just said there says
hey thanks for doing all of our dirty
bug testing work for the next
or for the past six years we appreciate
that and as a gift
as a token of appreciation if you're
running a 7th gen chip we'll let you
test windows 11 give us some good
telemetry but when it comes time to
installing it
we're not going to let you do it like
just the brazen nature of that and i
suspect that
well i would say that they potentially
wrote this before all this stuff kind of
like played out in in like twitter
versus in social media and online
um but still that's a pretty brazen
thought that you can like yeah we'll let
you test it but we won't let you run the
production builds because
well that's what that's just the way the
cookie crumbled um at the end of the day
so there's like it's really frustrating
right now because and i suspect
microsoft has got to be frustrated as
well and hopefully they take this re
this weekend to kind of reflect on
everything that's going on
and maybe provide some clear language or
maybe they're just going to put their
head down and try to ram through the
situation and just ignore
everything that is going on but i got to
tell you it's pretty frustrating that
microsoft launched windows 11 and i'm
not here to talk negatively about the os
it's because i honestly think windows 11
looks pretty good like there's a lot of
good stuff in there that i'm excited
about i can't wait to start hopefully
running it
one day but as of right now it's a
little bit confusing about if i'm going
to be able to run it
the problem is is microsoft's basically
logistics behind the scenes
of compatibility with the os and
microsoft has in traditional fashion not
done a great job of communicating all
this
in clear language so that we all
understand why because as
of right now if i were to just like roll
the dice about what is actually going to
happen
um it's based on that soft floor stuff
that microsoft
has now scrubbed from the internet i
suspect that if you have a device
such as a 7700k sitting right here or a
7900x that may or may not be supported
or whatever
i suspect that you might actually be
able to install windows 11 but microsoft
is just going to kind of close their
eyes and be like hey this is not an
officially recommended build
for windows 11 because it's missing some
magical feature that we don't quite know
about they
we that's what this blog post that we're
waiting on for microsoft
is hopefully going to explain why a
seventh generation chip that has a lot
of horsepower
is not capable of running windows 11 in
their recommended fashion
it's got to be something security
related potentially although the
conspiracy theories are already out
there that this is microsoft teaming up
with oems it's like hey
how are we going to keep devices selling
this holiday season let's just not let
them upgrade to windows 11.
i mean it kind of like it's hard to
ignore that possibility that this is
where microsoft is headed and their oems
you know are falling at the mouse
thinking about how many devices they're
gonna sell because all these devices
won't upgrade to windows 11 and
microsoft will then look like a hero to
their oms and
they will sell lots of devices and
everybody makes money except for the
consumers and people like me
who might have to buy two new boxes at a
significant expense which honestly i
just may not even do because like this
the 7700k is fine the 7900x is even more
fine like they're not
slow in any capacity it's quite
literally just an artificial limitation
that microsoft is placing
uh to stop this stuff it's a really sour
note on microsoft's rich history of
supporting longevity of compatibility
across generations of devices especially
in the app world
and even in the hardware world they've
been pretty good the tpm 2.0 i
understand is going to be an issue for
some people but realistically i think
that has been pretty much in
every single chip set since about 2016.
so
the vast majority of people are fine
there it's the people who bought
sixth and seventh gen chips that are now
struggling to make this scenario even
worse
if you go buy a surface studio 2 from
microsoft they're selling it
right now on their store it is a 7th gen
chip that is not
by definition capable of running windows
11.
it's like come on guys so as we wait to
hear how microsoft either tries to back
out of this and start supporting more
chipsets
or makes it really clear about what the
future is for people who have
high-end chipsets that are not
necessarily necessarily supported
we don't quite know and so i've tried
not to make this like a ranting video
but the reality is like this is creating
this is creating a lot of cloud around
microsoft and not like the good cloud
like where your data is stored
and you can do all that stuff like it's
covering up what windows 11 should be
celebrating right now but the problem is
we don't know if we are going to be able
to run windows 11 and let's be honest
the early adopters are absolutely going
to be the types of people
who build their own boxes the
enthusiasts and these are the people who
right now are most confused
if they can run windows 11. so folks
as always keep it subscribed here
because the only bs on this channel
is the windows 11 compatibility list