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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: 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.