Windows 11 24H2 goes from “unsupported” to “unbootable” on some older CPUs

[jagdtigger]

8 hours ago, leadeater said:

A lot of instructions are more useful than a lot of people tend to believe, when it causes hardware support to be lost and default to "it's dumb and useless".

And there is a thing in programming where you can branch out depending on which instruction is available......... As for the reasons cryptography might be valid, but the AI/ML part is just a gimmick TBH.

[StDragon]

5 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

but the AI/ML part is just a gimmick TBH.

I agree, I don't think this change is for AI/ML. There's already a Windows platform called DirectML that will leverage either the GPU (any DirectX 12 card), NPU (on CPU die), or both.

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2023/12/14/directml-accelerating-ai-on-windows-now-with-npus/

Both newer Intel and AMD CPUs will contain NPUs which is perfect for running AI workloads on notebooks. But if you have a desktop with a DX12 card (most of you have one I suspect), the GPU would be more performant at the expense of power efficiencies. Think of the NPU as the APU/iGPU of AI instead of graphics; not as powerful as a GPU, but way more power efficient for the mobile market. Speaking of, ARM SoCs for iPhone/Android have had NPUs for at least 5 years now, so this isn't bleeding edge tech, just newer to be put to practical use.

Windows 11 24H2 will be leveraging the NPU/GPU for DirectML usage.

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

And there is a thing in programming where you can branch out depending on which instruction is available......... As for the reasons cryptography might be valid, but the AI/ML part is just a gimmick TBH.

 

21 minutes ago, StDragon said:

I agree, I don't think this change is for AI/ML. There's already a Windows platform called DirectML that will leverage either the GPU (any DirectX 12 card), NPU (on CPU die), or both.

Really depends on a lot of things, yea you can offload tasks but some things will still run on CPU. Either way as the write up literally says this instruction/code function is so ubiquitous that compliers will detect it and replace with this instruction if you aren't using it. Which basically makes it a dead argument, it's useful enough that it warrants requiring it from now on rather than just allowing less efficient methods, it is not a new instruction by any stretch.

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, RejZoR said:

It has been like 2 years since I kicked Windows 11 and replaced it with Linux on that system, but I'm fairly certain that TPM 2.0 was detected and supported with Ryzen 2500U. It was some other arbitrary BS that Microsoft decided upon to not support it.

Nope, it detects TPM is present but it's only 1.2 so not supported. The checker will give it a green tick for TPM but then not on the CPU, yea that is a dumb way to do it. You can also have a TPM 2.0 module rather than fTPM.

 

Anyway I remember the first round of all this complaining about Windows 11 and it was from memory actually more legitimate than the complainers wanted it to be, just like here for this time too.

 

There are such a thing a "bad products" and sometimes you can end up buying them, clearly Ryzen Mobile 2000 is in that sort of realm. You can legitimately be annoyed, very even, that doesn't actually make Windows 11 requirements bad or stupid.

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, starsmine said:

with 100% confidence, my 2500U is using TPM 2.0

Hmm interesting, all the technical info says 1.2. I wonder if an AGESA or something upgraded Zen to 2.0 at some point?

[rcmaehl]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

Hmm interesting, all the technical info says 1.2. I wonder if an AGESA or something upgraded Zen to 2.0 at some point?

All Ryzen chips should be TPM 2.0, make sure you have fTPM selected in BIOS and that chipset + BIOS are up to date. 

[Lunar River]

13 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

For the very reason of this article - they may remove support in future updates because they want to optimise the OS with instructions it does not support.

 

I kept telling people not to do it because this would happen, nobody listened.  It was blatantly obvious Microsoft wanted to be able to use new instructions in CPUs without having the hassle of having fallbacks.

 

You will notice Alan Wake 2 also had a similar issue in development, where they wanted a fallback for Mesh Shaders but realised it was way too much work so released the game with it officially not supported to run on cards without it, but the incomplete fallback still included.

 

There comes a point where using new instructions and having fallback solutions where it not available, just becomes completely impractical as the support and development costs are huge.

I do find it very weird that people complain about Windows having too much bloat, but when they start to remove old things for the sake of streamlining the OS, people lose their minds

[starsmine]

14 minutes ago, Lunar River said:

I do find it very weird that people complain about Windows having too much bloat, but when they start to remove old things for the sake of streamlining the OS, people lose their minds

Different definition of bloat. 
the bloat is why it cant run on old hardware a lot of the time. (just not this time)

[Alex Atkin UK]

11 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

And there is a thing in programming where you can branch out depending on which instruction is available......... As for the reasons cryptography might be valid, but the AI/ML part is just a gimmick TBH.

Which means potentially garbage performance on hardware using fallback methods and a lot more QA testing, which Microsoft are not exactly doing a great job at for what they DO support.

[jagdtigger]

3 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Which means potentially garbage performance on hardware using fallback methods and a lot more QA testing, which Microsoft are not exactly doing a great job at for what they DO support.

Lets just say they practically do not do QA/QC, the just release something to a small subset of users and keep widening the circle until some issue arises or it is "proven" to be stable.......
As for the performance slow pc>>>>>>>>unbootable pc.

[StDragon]

13 hours ago, leadeater said:

 

Really depends on a lot of things, yea you can offload tasks but some things will still run on CPU. Either way as the write up literally says this instruction/code function is so ubiquitous that compliers will detect it and replace with this instruction if you aren't using it. Which basically makes it a dead argument, it's useful enough that it warrants requiring it from now on rather than just allowing less efficient methods, it is not a new instruction by any stretch.

It's not that "POPCNT isn't important, rather I don't believe AI/ML is the driving force behind this change. That's all.

[RejZoR]

What is Rufus equivalent on Linux that has all the bypass shenanigans?

[Kilrah]

Can also use Ventoy to do a multi boot usb and configure it to do the bypasses on the fly when a win11 iso is selected.

[Winterlight]

Actually is good in past 20 year network change drastically and it become way more danger than ever before. Just one wrong click and you can lose everything these days especially if you use outdated OS, Hardware that not meet anymore today's security standard. Windows 11 is drastically improved in security I not say that is impossible to break but it become way more harder do that. Security have its price. Sadly but truth is that we live in dangerous age and a lot people still lack even basic security knowledge. All this change in Windows 11 have it's price in hardware but it reduce a lot security risk compared to older OS.

[RejZoR]

18 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Can also use Ventoy to do a multi boot usb and configure it to do the bypasses on the fly when a win11 iso is selected.

I've been using Ventoy for ages, but didn't realize it supports this, but you have to go into extra submenu to adjust it...

[Kilrah]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I've been using Ventoy for ages, but didn't realize it supports this, but you have to go into extra submenu to adjust it...

There is the "VentoyPlugson" tool that opens a webinterface with a bunch of config options...

[BrandonTech.05]

On 2/13/2024 at 6:08 PM, Lunar River said:

anyone actually upset at 2008 cpus no longer being usable, you might want to recheck the calendar to see what year you're in

I kind of get what you mean but my surface pro 4 isn't fast by any means but it still is useful for drawing and watching videos. It will last longer than october of next year and im pretty much forced to just put linux on it.

[E-waste]

On 2/16/2024 at 8:11 AM, Winterlight said:

All this change in Windows 11 have it's price in hardware but it reduce a lot security risk compared to older OS.

Linux doesn't drop hardware support NEARLY this aggressively.  i586 and i686 (somewhere around 2000-2006 not sure) is still supported in Debian, although overall software that supports it is a lot lower.  But still Linux doesn't force you to upgrade to a newer computer.

 

I think this is the wrong direction for Windows, and I think a course reversal and a new tragectory would be best.

 

But Microsoft doesn't care at all about electronic waste, evidenced by their 100% lack of any customer support for their botched Surface line.  If they don't respect and caterxto their users, why should we give one shit about them?

[starsmine]

2 hours ago, BrandonT.05 said:

I kind of get what you mean but my surface pro 4 isn't fast by any means but it still is useful for drawing and watching videos. It will last longer than october of next year and im pretty much forced to just put linux on it.

Huh?
what year did your surface pro 4 come out?
I am surprised to learn it came out before 2009.
 

1 hour ago, E-waste said:

Linux doesn't drop hardware support NEARLY this aggressively.  i586 and i686 (somewhere around 2000-2006 not sure) is still supported in Debian, although overall software that supports it is a lot lower.  But still Linux doesn't force you to upgrade to a newer computer.

 

I think this is the wrong direction for Windows, and I think a course reversal and a new tragectory would be best.

 

But Microsoft doesn't care at all about electronic waste, evidenced by their 100% lack of any customer support for their botched Surface line.  If they don't respect and caterxto their users, why should we give one shit about them?

calling the pentium 2 the i686 is weird. I get the 586, as thats what its called in asm. 
But also this is a weird equivalence, the OS has different goals, and those machines are generally airgapped. Most distros at this point have minimal or NO support for 32bit CPUs.

[E-waste]

2 minutes ago, starsmine said:

the OS has different goals, and those machines are generally airgapped. Most distros at this point have minimal or NO support for 32bit CPUs.

Sure, but you can use the oldest of the oldest x86_64 bit CPUs from AMD on all Linux systems, but dropping support for hardware this aggresively should be a criminal act against the environment.  We aren't there yet, so Microsoft can pull this horseshit and flood the planet with electronic waste.  They are almost as bad as Apple now, basically right there with them.  We now have two "apple" companies that vant you to throw your computer in a dump (and your phone too) every six years, all for PROFIT, not because they care about our planet, or humanity, or the people working as slaves in Africa.

 

It's gotten so bad that there is more slave labor today than there ever was 400 years ago.

[tim0901]

2 hours ago, E-waste said:

Linux doesn't drop hardware support NEARLY this aggressively.  i586 and i686 (somewhere around 2000-2006 not sure) is still supported in Debian, although overall software that supports it is a lot lower.  But still Linux doesn't force you to upgrade to a newer computer.

The reason Debian is still supported on such old systems is because that's pretty much its purpose. It's tagline is that it is the Universal Operating System. If you go ahead and look at Ubuntu, you'll find no support for such ancient architectures - just x86_64, ARM and PowerPC. Saying "Linux doesn't drop hardware support" is wrong. Debian doesn't drop hardware support. Other distros are more than happy to.

 

It's also a lot easier to justify supporting older architectures for longer when more of your user base uses it. Debian is used a lot in embedded systems that would cost huge amounts of money to replace or upgrade. Windows... isn't. You don't find CNC machines or MRI scanners running Windows - you just attach them to a Windows machine via USB/ethernet so regular users can use them in a familiar environment.

 

Chances are the actual hard work of supporting these old architectures is done by the people who need it, which also makes it a lot easier to justify as an organisation.

[jagdtigger]

26 minutes ago, tim0901 said:

The reason Debian is still supported on such old systems is because that's pretty much its purpose.

Id it is more like a side effect of their main goal (stability) rather than their goal.. If you drop HW stupid like MS that is very far from stability.

[starsmine]

30 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Id it is more like a side effect of their main goal (stability) rather than their goal.. If you drop HW stupid like MS that is very far from stability.

this seems like a non sequitur.

support for older hardware has literally nothing to do with stability. 

1 hour ago, E-waste said:

Sure, but you can use the oldest of the oldest x86_64 bit CPUs from AMD on all Linux systems, but dropping support for hardware this aggresively should be a criminal act against the environment.  We aren't there yet, so Microsoft can pull this horseshit and flood the planet with electronic waste.  They are almost as bad as Apple now, basically right there with them.  We now have two "apple" companies that vant you to throw your computer in a dump (and your phone too) every six years, all for PROFIT, not because they care about our planet, or humanity, or the people working as slaves in Africa.

 

It's gotten so bad that there is more slave labor today than there ever was 400 years ago.

I find it so difficult to understand anyone calling this aggressive. SSE 4.1 is OLD at this point. we are talking about 16 year old PCs at the time this update goes out. Windows 11 was already the wrong choice for those PCs as the ones that are connecting to the web are already to slow to run windows 11 as well as chromium/firefox as the modern features of windows 11 are to heavy. This isnt even a slight on windows. This isnt making more e-waste, modern software just is not happy on 16 year old hardware.

If you have old software to continue running, if its windows only, it needs to be an airgapped PC and then the version of windows doesnt need to be 11, you just run your old windows.

If it needs internet, OS for slow hardware, like versions of the linux kernel are better options. 

 

[BabaGanuche]

2 hours ago, tim0901 said:

You don't find CNC machines or MRI scanners running Windows

That is not correct I have a Mazak Quick Turn 350 and it uses an embedded window 8.1.

 

However I do not see what Microsoft is doing here as a problem. It is soo old that it should not be running Win 11.

 

Also for a Linux comparison you need to be talking about kernel versions. If you are not running something newer than 5.10 you are effectively running the windows 10 of linux.

[Kisai]

7 hours ago, BabaGanuche said:

That is not correct I have a Mazak Quick Turn 350 and it uses an embedded window 8.1.

 

However I do not see what Microsoft is doing here as a problem. It is soo old that it should not be running Win 11.

 

Also for a Linux comparison you need to be talking about kernel versions. If you are not running something newer than 5.10 you are effectively running the windows 10 of linux.

Linux has no linear comparison with Windows. You can still run the 2.x kernels on current hardware if you're hard pressed to do so *cough*cough*redhat, 2.6.32 2024*cough*

 

What makes Linux, a "Linux" is the software out of the box, not the kernel version. Where as Windows and MacOS have an expected feature set out of the box.