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Windows 11 hardware requirements made a mockery of by an Intel Pentium 4 processor
As the screenshots below show, Microsoft considers the Intel Pentium 4 661 a supported processor. Intel released the Pentium 4 661 in early 2006, with a solitary core to its name. Apparently, Microsoft forgot to add any Intel Family 15 (Netburst) SKUs in its unsupported processors list for Windows 11.
Hence, the PC Health Check tool sees that the Pentium 4 661 has a 3.6 GHz boost clock, which satisfies one of Windows 11's requirements. Curiously, the tool states that the Pentium 4 661 has two or more cores, even though it lists it as having one.
@Carlos_SM1995 has even got Windows 11 (Build 22000.258) running on a Pentium 4 661. Supposedly, Windows Update still works too, highlighting the ridiculousness of Microsoft's overtures regarding Windows 11 compatibility.
Windows 11 final (Build 22000.258) running on Intel Pentium 4 (11m4s video)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday October 19 2021, @05:53AM (22 children)
The whole "it only runs on these processors" is purely artificial. There is no technical reason it shouldn't run on any mostly contemporary CPU, it's deliberate sabotage.
(Score: 5, Funny) by pTamok on Tuesday October 19 2021, @06:50AM
So long as the processor's instruction set is Turing-complete, Windows 11 should run on anything, assuming the tape is long enough.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @08:10AM (2 children)
Until you get a very technical unsupported instruction fault.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @12:33PM
At which point it won't matter if it's supported or not, MS can't actually figure out why it happened in most cases. And if it was just that machine, it probably won't be fixed. MS used to at least pretend to care about quality, these days they don't even have the machines to do any meaningful QA.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Thursday October 21 2021, @07:00PM
That's not what we have here. It's not that Win11 doesn't run on old CPUs due to a crash or because Win11 makes use of instructions not present on those old CPUs. Since Intel made a point of being backwards compatible to the stone age, including even a couple of processor bugs in newer hardware to make sure the workarounds OSs made for them continue to work, what we have here is that Win11 deliberately checks for what CPU you are trying to run it on, and if it detects one MS doesn't like, it just flatly refuses to run, even though it obviously, technically, would.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @10:56AM (5 children)
Is it even legal? Sure the code might be slow, but can a software vendor arbitrarily lock the product to specific hardware legally?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday October 19 2021, @12:05PM
We could ask Apple.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RedGreen on Tuesday October 19 2021, @12:20PM
"Is it even legal? Sure the code might be slow, but can a software vendor arbitrarily lock the product to specific hardware legally?"
There is no law against it unless done to diminish competition violating anti-trust laws. But Apple has done the same forever when they upgrade their OS with artificial limitations on the hardware supported by the next version of the OS cutting off the old hardware that is still usable with the new OS. There is a whole cottage industry of sorts around finding the work a rounds to allow the continued use of the old hardware with the new OS. Apple took a little turn from their garbage hardware locks they used to do years back like special firmware on the hard drives and video cards to limit you to their expensive options. They were open for a tiny while now it is back to non-upgrade able everything with it all glued down or soldered to the logic boards. Ensuring even more expensive and environmentally damaging replacements when only a normal tiny part would need to be replaced in any other machine it is the whole board with them. They like to talk a good game but in practice their lies are many on those subjects, like their we use none of the slave labour in China hilarity they sell on a regular basis to their sheeple. Enough of that rant of the day this is about MS garbage which is piled even higher than Apples or at least equal heights. All them companies lie about this and the bribes paid to the politicians keep them raking in the profits without oversight, violating the people's everything they can to wring every last cent of it out us. Fucking parasites every good damn one of them there are no good corporations at all as far as I am concerned. They are the reason the planet is in the mess we are right now along with their collaborators the bought and paid for politicians.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @12:22PM
It would be completely different if they were physically testing the software the way that they used to on real hardware. If they just listed the models that they had in a QA lab and blacklisted the rest of it, that would be somewhat understandable. But, these days, they basically don't do any testing of fixes and if something does happen, there's a very good chance that they don't have any of the necessary information to figure out what happened with any reliability.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Tuesday October 19 2021, @12:30PM
Hey, someone else who does not own a stupid smart phone!
Unfortunately the rule in this modern world is "If it isn't expressly illegal, companies will do it". It doesn't matter if something is unethical, abusive, or technically wrong, if there is no law expressly against it and it can make a company money somehow, they will do it.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 19 2021, @04:30PM
It is in your very most goodest interest if Microsoft locks Windows 11 to machines having the instructions that their compiler will generate.
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 2) by iWantToKeepAnon on Tuesday October 19 2021, @02:27PM (8 children)
Not all CPUs are created the same. Lot's of progress in the last 14 years. Why should M$ restrict their instruction set and not take advantage of those advancements? Especially if one of them would provide a speedup or otherwise enhanced experience? Checkout the specs below of a CPU on one of our work linux servers (not recommending this CPU in any way, just one that is handy at the moment). Do you think a CPU from 2006 has the same technical spec? Wouldn't you be upset if linux didn't take advantage of every bit of juice your CPU could provide?
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday October 19 2021, @04:19PM (1 child)
Software can be written to test for whether an instruction is implemented, and only then use routines that require the instruction.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday October 19 2021, @04:44PM
Consider the configuration nightmare. How many different duplicate sets of routines do you want Windows to have? Consider just the Kernel for a second. How many different permutations of Kernel should Microsoft compile for? There are different dimensions of features that a processor may or may not have.
Now that said, let me digress a moment and point out where Java wins hands down on processor compatibility. See this journal article: It's fashionable to hate Java [soylentnews.org], where I explain about the C1 / C2 native compilers.
Summary:
Your JVM bytecode starts up being interpreted. As soon as a function is identified as using disproportionate CPU, it gets immediately compiled quickly by the C1 native compiler into much faster but not optimal code. It is also added to a list of functions to be recompiled by the native C2 compiler soon. When the C2 compiler comes around, it will spend significant time and effort compiling your function to native code. C2 can take advantage of things known only at runtime, which cannot be known ahead of time, such as a C compiler. For example, maybe this one method call does not actually need to be a virtual call going through a vtable. There is only one instance of a subclass ever, at all in the entire program. And many other optimizations an ahead of time compiler cannot know. In particular, and of specific relevance here is that the C2 compiler can compile your function to the exact instruction set of the hardware it is currently running on. Does your processor have this or that other set of vector extensions? Or this or that other coprocessor, or some other feature? The code is compiled to the exact processor you are running on. Whether it is Intel, AMD, or even a different architecture, ARM (many flavors), Power PC, even IBM mainframes, etc.
Thus, Java programs start up slow, then seem to "warm up" and run fast. This is great for a program that will run for a long time and wants excellent performance. It is horrible for quick command line programs such as 'ls'.
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday October 19 2021, @07:40PM (5 children)
Not at all, that would be logical. But obviously they didn't do that. As it has been demonstrated, the code does run on ancient hardware, and since Intel has been backwards compatible for as long as I can remember, to the point where newer CPUs had to include all the bugs the old CPUs came with and programmers programmed around, this would suggest that Windows should run on newer hardware, and it not running is only due to MS deliberately sabotaging it.
(Score: 2) by iWantToKeepAnon on Wednesday October 20 2021, @04:28PM (4 children)
I am not a M$ cheerleader, but ... showing screenshots or even a video doesn't prove that it runs for all software in all environments. It could easily throw unsupported instruction errors running on hardware at a level that is below the build process compile flags. CPUs may be backward compatible but they are not *forward* compatible. Apple has been breaking backwards compatibility for, well, since forever. I think M$ is well within their rights to require a modern CPU to run on, and it may even be overdue.
How many times must this happen [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/strategy-letter-ii-chicken-and-egg-problems/] :
Since I have to run Windows on work PCs, I'd be glad to get rid of all those old "special mode"s.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 2) by iWantToKeepAnon on Wednesday October 20 2021, @04:44PM
Also of note to the backwards compatibility issue : https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ [joelonsoftware.com]
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday October 20 2021, @09:31PM (2 children)
Again: Nobody complains about them not "officially" supporting ancient hardware. You run it and it runs, fine, you run it and it barfs, too bad. No support.
What they did, though, is deliberately sabotaging the ability of the software to run on certain CPUs. It doesn't just simply crash because of an illegal instruction or unsupported function, it checks for the type of CPU you have and if it detects one that it does not want to run on, it refuses to.
Do you understand the difference?
(Score: 2) by iWantToKeepAnon on Sunday October 24 2021, @02:04AM (1 child)
> Do you understand the difference?
Yes of course, let's not get condescending. But M$ doesn't want hordes of tweets and ig's about how horrible the new OS is and how it crashes all the time; public opinion is still important. Nip it in the bud and just don't allow it.
But I agree, there should be a hack or a huge RED don't press this button to run on old hardware. There probably will be a hack, in time.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday October 25 2021, @04:15AM
If information control and PR was the name of the game, that's easy to do. Make sure everyone and their dog knows the minimum specs and use your army of fanboys to mercilessly mock anyone who complains about performance on unsupported hardware.
Sorry, not buying it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 20 2021, @01:58AM (2 children)
I suspect it's a bit of industry collusion (sell new hardware) based in a little bit of technical pain in the ass details on some of the blacklisted processors. Sure, they could solve those problems with the not-so-old chips, but that would cost development time and money - so why do it when you can make your industry partners happy by pushing the new hardware?
Windows 10 was just coming out when we were starting development on our new generation of a product originally launched in the 1980s. This is the fourth generation, previous generation is past 15 years on the market and getting hard to source parts for. When Windows 10 was selected for use in the product it was touted as the "forever Windows - last version there will be, just going to do rolling patches from here until the heat death of the Universe" or something along those lines. I told the Redmondites: "yeah, sure..." and here we are. I suspect 10 going end of life is going to happen before this generation of hardware expires. Hopefully our custom written .NET software ports to the next thing without too much pain.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday October 20 2021, @11:08AM (1 child)
I would have zero problem with them listing a bunch of processors as "deprecated" and unsupported. You run it on them, you're on your own, we don't patch for them. If it works, hey, good for you, if it doesn't, well, sucks to be you. That's all you get.
No problem with that.
What happens here is that they obviously check whether you try to run the software on certain hardware and explicitly do not allow you to do it. That's something VERY different than simply not supporting something, that's deliberately sabotaging it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 20 2021, @03:56PM
Yes, deliberate sabotage, and posturing that forcing consumers to upgrade "for their own good" is acceptable. My answer to that has been a hard opt out whenever I have a choice, but in the end this is shaping our children's world and they need to be the ones who stand up and call out the B.S. as unacceptable.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end