Microsoft appears to have silently patched a loophole that allowed Windows 11 to be installed without having to meet the ultra-specific system requirements that the company imposed months ago.
This change, introduced with Windows Insider build 27686, had, until this point, slipped relatively under the radar.
This trick involved this tweak of the “setup.exe/product server” command.
That new method opened doors for users; now, it was possible to bypass Microsoft’s hardware checks, so that made Windows 11 installable on devices would, without the previous arrangement, being classified as incompatible.
That, of course, isn’t in the changelog.
There obviously were many more things other than that change – e.g., a fix to the Windows Sandbox Client, or a capacity of the FAT32 file system set up to 2TB when formulating from the command line.
But it’s the tightening of these hardware checks that has at least some watching potential upgrade paths.
Microsoft has yet to comment officially on whether this change is permanent or simply a temporary glitch in the Canary channel, where this build was released.
The Canary channel, which is on the leading edge of Windows development, often includes updates that might or might not make the final public release.
In that case, this really remains a gray area of whether that is a new policy or just a fix of what Microsoft may consider as an unintended “bug” in the system”.
For most, this update is a major move, especially for those who have been relying on workarounds to avoid upgrading the hardware so that it can meet the requirements Windows 11 states.
These are the requirements: a 1 GHz or faster processor with at least two cores, 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage, and the controversial Trusted Platform Module version 2.0. “Especially vexing was the TPM chip. It’s required to run certain features, like BitLocker Drive Encryption, but not under Microsoft’s Windows Server 2025.”.
With most versions of Windows 10 due to lose support in just 14 months from now, users are under pressure to upgrade to Windows 11. Still, numbers are growing for Windows 11, although the hardware requirements are proving a major stumbling block.
With the loophole closed, it looks like Microsoft is going to double down on enforcing these requirements, which might have left users with very few options to upgrade without meeting them at this point.
Whether this can push more people towards investing in new pieces of hardware or just keep looking for new workarounds, the debate can go on, but one thing for sure is that Microsoft is getting serious on hardware requirements for Windows 11.
Just in case you are wondering, here is the loophole that was used to upgrade to Windows 11 without meeting the hardware necessities for the latest Windows OS.
