Microsoft’s ‘good news’ for old PC users comes with this ‘bad news’ – Times of India

Microsoft recently had good news for owners of PCs with older CPUs. It said that it won’t block users from installing Windows 11 on a PC with an older CPU, “so long as you download and manually install an ISO file all by yourself”. Now it seems that this good news comes with a huge catch. As the company has reportedly added a big technicality to this. According to a report in The Verge, the software giant is now threatening to withhold Windows Updates from copy of Windows 11 if users take this route. These updates may also include security patches.
Microsoft has reportedly said that unsupported PCs won’t be entitled to receive Windows Updates, and that even security and driver updates may be withheld. The report further adds that Microsoft declined to clarify things any further.
What it may mean for users of old PCs
This means that if users of these older PCs upgrade to Windows 11 manually using the ISO file route, they may loose access to future security updates released by the company. The security risk that comes with this can be imagined considering the times we live in where lakhs of PCs are hacked every day globally. This also means that these users will have to go back to the days of manually downloading driver updates for all their hardware which may not be an easy task.
What are ISO files
An ISO file (also called an ISO image) are files that contains an identical copy of data found on an optical disc, like a CD or DVD. They are used for backing up optical discs, or for distributing large file sets that are intended to burned to an optical disc. Over the years, Microsoft and other tech giants have moved to over-the-air updates for OS updates. The OTA updates can be downloaded from the internet manually or can be put on automatic mode.
Microsoft makes slight change in system requirements for Windows 11
Microsoft has also slightly updated system requirements for Windows 11 upgrade. Windows 11 will now officially support Intel Core X-series, Xeon W-series, and the Intel Core 7820HQ. The company announced its Windows 11 minimum hardware requirements in June as per which only Intel 8th generation and beyond CPUs were officially supported.
“We have concluded that the compatible 64-bit processors selected, 4GB of memory, 64GB of storage, UEFI secure boot, graphics requirements and TPM 2.0 are the right minimum system requirements to deliver on the principles we established to best support you,” Microsoft said in a statement. “We did identify a set of PC models that meet the principles while running on Intel 7th gen processors that we did not originally include in our minimum system requirements,” added the statement.