Windows may start watermarking unsupported user PC's

[Salv8 (sam)]

Summary

Microsoft will now start putting a watermark on the screen 'warning' the user that the system is unsupported if it does not meet the system requirements for windows 11. this message only appears in the testing builds currently and may not make it into the final builds intended for consumer and business use.

example: (may not be the final design)

 

Quotes

Quote

Windows 11 has been changed so that it now presents a more visible warning, using a watermark on the desktop to caution those running the OS on an unsupported PC that the device doesn’t meet its system requirements – although this move is only in testing right now.

 

It follows a previous tweak whereby Microsoft placed a cautionary ‘system requirements not met’ message within System Settings, again only in preview builds of Windows 11, but the watermark – which appears above the system tray (where the clock is, bottom-right) – is a far heavier-handed warning.

 

My thoughts

i have the unfortunate feeling that scammers will use this to sell 'upgrades' to your system that gets rid of the message, with the forced Microsoft accounts coming soon this will be yet another reason to stay with 10 or switch to something else such as a linux distro (or OSX if you prefer apple bull****ery then microsoft bull****ery)

 

Sources

https://www.techradar.com/news/windows-11-could-be-watermarked-on-unsupported-pcs

[BachChain]

Minimum requirements don't mean much if you can still run the thing without meeting them.

[GuiltySpark_]

10 minutes ago, BachChain said:

Minimum requirements don't mean much if you can still run the thing without meeting them.

As everyone should realize by now, the requirements for 11 were never about performance, but about security. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Looks like i was right in judging w11 to be a horrible os, even worse than 10. Lets see how bad it gets till consumers finally get properly pissed off and not just forget about it in a week like the situation with w11 hardware requirements

 

Welp w11 is not even an option for me cause of this garbage so its either modded w10, w7, or linux

 

Lets see how bad w12 is once ms knows how to devolve w11 into something worse and call it w12

[bmx6454]

13 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

As everyone should realize by now, the requirements for 11 were never about performance, but about security. 

i get that, but it should not be forced imo.. if you want to run your pc with win11 with "less secure" hardware, that should be your choice as the consumer. it is your pc after all.

1 minute ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Looks like i was right in judging w11 to be a horrible os, even worse than 10. Lets see how bad it gets till consumers finally get properly pissed off and not just forget about it in a week like the situation with w11 hardware requirements

they won't. the majority of people will put up with just about anything, wether they like it or not lol

[BachChain]

9 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

As everyone should realize by now, the requirements for 11 were never about performance, but about security. 

Same deal, if feature x is so important that product y explicitly doesn't support platform z for not having feature x, then product y should flat out refuse to work on platform z. If it does, then feature x obviously isn't as important as it's made out to be.

[Kisai]

56 minutes ago, BachChain said:

Minimum requirements don't mean much if you can still run the thing without meeting them.

Ask people who ran Windows 95 on a 386, and Windows XP on a Pentium I. The requirements have always been meaningless. If you install it without hacking the installer, or migrating the hard drive, the requirements don't mean anything.

 

The hard drive itself, being migrated from machine A to B, is probably the "intended" reason for the message. Or migration of a VM from machine to A or B.

[starsmine]

1 hour ago, BachChain said:

Same deal, if feature x is so important that product y explicitly doesn't support platform z for not having feature x, then product y should flat out refuse to work on platform z. If it does, then feature x obviously isn't as important as it's made out to be.

It also means its not validated, or supported to work, not just security, so any bugs you run into now or in the future will not be addressed. like if they run into some undiscovered edge case on broadwell that bugs out a windows 11 update, they wont fix it, so dont blame MS about the windows bug on that system not present on other systems. 

AKA why it is a security concern cause a bug like that would have the potential to be a zero day vulnerability in all likelyhood. 

They are not trying to lock down the OS so hard to prevent a user from running it, just enough to dissuade people from doing it. 
Having this for insider build is more them saying, dont complain about bugs from the interaction between windows and your unsupported hardware.

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

As everyone should realize by now, the requirements for 11 were never about performance, but about security. 

The whole "the minimum requirement for windows 11 are for security reasons" is just a rumor and it was confirmed to be false by Microsoft's head of security. 

 

The minimum requirements are not because of security, not because of performance and not because of some special feature. 

 

They were arbitrarily chosen because Microsoft felt it was an okay cutoff. 

[Drenkai]

I'd like to just point out that this looks to be for the insider ring, you can tell because it says "evaluation copy". Hopefully it won't be a thing in the production version that ships to customers. That said I do believe they'll be adding a warning about not meeting the minimum requirements in the settings app. 

[mr moose]

8 hours ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

My thoughts

i have the unfortunate feeling that scammers will use this to sell 'upgrades' to your system that gets rid of the message, with the forced Microsoft accounts coming soon this will be yet another reason to stay with 10 or switch to something else such as a linux distro (or OSX if you prefer apple bull****ery then microsoft bull****ery)

 

This is why I am urging all my Aussie friends to make an official complaint to the ACCC (in their state or federal).  I already have, I kept my complaint solely to the fact that windows 11 does not support many of the hardware purchased in 2019 (mine being a 3600), with win 10 being advertised heavily as a service that would be updated indefinitely.  which essentially means by them dropping support for 10 and limiting support for 11 many of us who jumped on the AMD 3000 series when they released will have to buy new hardware if we want to continue to run a supported windows.   In a nutshell those of us who bought new machines literally just over 2 years ago only have 3 years left then we have to buy a new computer.  5.5 years for a PC is way too short, my last one was over 8 years and is still running strong as a family computer in the lounge room.

 

I believe this line of arguing is the one with the most likely chance of being investigated because it clearly is a violation of advertising laws in Australia.  The whole accounts thing is too grey and will only result in watering down a chance at getting windows 11 support for all hardware or extending windows 10 support longer.

[suicidalfranco]

8 hours ago, bmx6454 said:

i get that, but it should not be forced imo.. if you want to run your pc with win11 with "less secure" hardware, that should be your choice as the consumer. it is your pc after all.

Yeah, no. As stated by the corporate slaves in this forum "their platform, their rules". Just use the competition if you don't like it

[Doobeedoo]

I mean, if it's not supported makes sense why even instal and complain later.

I wonder will the requirement for login for Pro go live, that's the more interesting question.

On the other hand I,ve read rumors MS is about to begin dev for Win 12 heh. I find it so odd how they operate with such dev structure and update cycle, that's also fragmented within same ver updates even. Heck even 10 wasn't finished in some aspects like UI stuff. 11 is new, but still many things may not be finished or released for a while. At least we see return of stuff that should be there already. When will DirectStorage come for example? So lame, I can't understand this 'early access' approach for a OS of all things. They could do so much better though.

[SimplyChunk]

Who would have thought 5 years ago? that in the future, we'd all be clinging on to Windows 10 for our lives? 

[Thaldor]

9 hours ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

As everyone should realize by now, the requirements for 11 were never about performance, but about "security". 

Fixed that for you.

 

We can't talk about security when no one can freely audit Windows "security" and their "security" programs aren't open for everyone to inspect them for a foul-play. Any requirement for stronger identification for a system where the security program itself is a blackbox won't make the system anymore secure than the blackbox which can include whole array of backdoors and other malicious features that negate the security of the system completely.

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Fixed that for you.

 

We can't talk about security when no one can freely audit Windows "security" and their "security" programs aren't open for everyone to inspect them for a foul-play. Any requirement for stronger identification for a system where the security program itself is a blackbox won't make the system anymore secure than the blackbox which can include whole array of backdoors and other malicious features that negate the security of the system completely.

It wasn't even about "security" according to Microsoft's director of OS Security.

 

 

So according to the person most likely involved with setting the requirements, it was for:

• Quality
• Performance
• Support
• Reliability

 

Quality - I don't get this one at all. Are they saying that the Intel Atom x6200FE processor has a higher quality than for example an AMD 2600X?

 

Performance - I don't buy that either because, as I said earlier, the 1GHz dual core Atom x6200FE is supported but the 2600X is not.

 

Support - Does he mean support from Intel and AMD? Pretty sure there are a lot of processors that are supported by the manufacturer but not supported by Windows 11. Besides, is support really a reason to implement unnecessary technical barriers in the OS? If Intel and AMD started dropping support for their processors as soon as the next one came out, would Windows start blocking last year's processors as well?

 

Reliability - This one they actually talked about in a blog post, and it was a garbage argument.

What it amounted to was that if they allowed unsupported hardware to run Windows 11, there would be 0.1% more crashes. That was it. Source

Quote

Reliability: Devices that do not meet the minimum system requirements had 52% more kernel mode crashes. Devices that do meet the minimum system requirements had a 99.8% crash free experience.

Windows 11 users with supported hardware = 99.8% crash free, which means 0.2% had crashes.

Windows 11 users with unsupported hardware = 52% more than 0.2%, which is 0.3%

[DrNaughtyhandz]

16 hours ago, bmx6454 said:

i get that, but it should not be forced imo.. if you want to run your pc with win11 with "less secure" hardware, that should be your choice as the consumer. it is your pc after all.

they won't. the majority of people will put up with just about anything, wether they like it or not lol

The enduser should not be forced. Manufacturers should most certainly be forced to. My gut feeling is that either: A. Microsoft told basically no one about this change of standards B. Manufacturers decided to skimp as it was not necessary until now to have the requirements. Perhaps a little of A and a little of B?

 

The nagging cynic in me keeps thinking they did it to get more $$ from those home and pro licenses, as well as data collection by forcing everyone getting new computers to sign into a Microsoft account to use their computer.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Is that a watermark, or just text on the default background like the windows 11 versions on the insider builds

[GoodBytes]

The warning is to stop scammers who are selling used systems that don't support Windows 11. The decision that Microsoft made on Windows ultimately leads to providing good experience in terms of responsiness and performance.

 

Already we see that motherboard manufacturers barely are providing support on AMD Ryzen 5000 series fTPM issues. Some have them and have no problem, others are still waiting and crossing their fingers. This is not new, I always bought my PC after a new release of Windows, to ensure that all drivers, software, BIOS are all Windows <Insert new version> ready. Then a new Windows comes out, and always, motherboard apps breaks, some other hardware software breaks. Not to mention driver issues, and sometimes needs to live with Microsoft default drivers (which thankfully works just as well as the official drivers, in my case... although I did have a laptop without working sound without popping and skips when using the built-in speakers, no issues on headphones. IDT Support said to contact OEM, OEM Tech support redirects me to Sales to buy a new laptop, despite being only 4 years old, at the time). Anyways, if you wonder, using Windows own basic audio drivers which is what Windows 7 (at the time) suggested and installed worked fine. Technically lost functionalities, but I don't care about it (and I think most won't either... EQ and the so important effects)

 

The issue in all this, is that people blame Windows not manufacturers poor support. A proof: Vista.

 

The other point is the security features the OS uses now by default. You want the newer CPUs with the acceleration technologies in them to reduce the impact of them. Lastly, Specter and Meltdown. Microsoft doesn't want to deal with them anymore for Windows 11. It is their choice.

[GoodBytes]

11 minutes ago, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

Is that a watermark, or just text on the default background like the windows 11 versions on the insider builds

Text. It's not like the activation. It is like the Insiders build text. So only shows on the desktop. Any content can go over it

[Helpful Tech Witch]

59 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Text. It's not like the activation. It is like the Insiders build text. So only shows on the desktop. Any content can go over it

So it’s not a watermark

 

people calm down, it’s not a big deal

[Salv8 (sam)]

1 hour ago, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

Is that a watermark, or just text on the default background like the windows 11 versions on the insider builds

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

Text. It's not like the activation. It is like the Insiders build text. So only shows on the desktop. Any content can go over it

from what i seen it's just text but again, it's an insiders build.

this could very well change in the final version, we'll just have to wait and see if Microsoft changes anything.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

1 minute ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

from what i seen it's just text but again, it's an insiders build.

this could very well change in the final version, we'll just have to wait and see if Microsoft changes anything.

All of that text is just a insiders thing, there’s exactly 0 reason to think that just that’s going to change

[darknessblade]

There is already a easy way to remove it just like the normal watermark.

 

https://www.techradar.com/news/windows-11-hack-removes-watermark-from-desktop-but-should-you-do-it

[mr moose]

10 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Fixed that for you.

 

We can't talk about security when no one can freely audit Windows "security" and their "security" programs aren't open for everyone to inspect them for a foul-play. Any requirement for stronger identification for a system where the security program itself is a blackbox won't make the system anymore secure than the blackbox which can include whole array of backdoors and other malicious features that negate the security of the system completely.

Even if it was about security,  Many governments around the world have access to the windows source code.  It has been an arrangement between MS and governments for 2 decades now.    Auditing such things for security is not really a problem.

 

Here's when they granted Australia access:

 

https://www.dww.com/articles/microsoft-grants-australian-government-access-to-windows-source-code-under-government