What will Windows 11 do on a computer with unsupported hardware?

Microsoft not only puts a watermark on unactivated or non-genuine copies of Windows, but applies the same thing if running Windows 11 on a computer with unsupported hardware.

This information is given by The Verge based on the most recent Windows 11 Release Preview build that Microsoft released with the number 22000.588. For hardware that doesn’t support Windows 11, they’ll see a message that reads as “system requirements not met,” and users are recommended to visit settings to learn more. There doesn’t seem to be any feature limitations on these systems, though.

It is known that Microsoft started testing the display of watermarks in raw versions of Windows 11 released in February. The inclusion of a watermark in the Release Preview version shows that Microsoft is willing to bring the warning to a complete software update in the near future.

Windows 11 will require a system equipped with an 8th Gen Intel Core CPU or an AMD chip based on the Zen+ or Zen 2 architectures. However, some people have made tweaks to the Microsoft-approved registration window in order to skip the CPU check and continue to install the operating system without the rejection message. With this in mind, Microsoft has warned that it may not be able to provide updates for these PCs, but the software will still work.

In fact, this Microsoft announcement is more of a disclaimer than a warning. Basically, Microsoft won’t help users if software misbehaves on an unsupported machine. Of course, if it is possible to skip the CPU test step in the first place, users can also remove the watermark through certain tricks. However, users will have to accept the fact that they will face security holes because they are not supported by Microsoft to update.