Windows 11: TPMs and Digital Sovereignty

[atom0s]

Most of the forced attempts at getting people to upgrade have just been for a means of new monetization. Since Windows 10 is 'free', Microsoft's goal was to get as many people onto it as possible to collect telemetry data instead, which is worth way more than the typical $100 for the OS.

This is generally done with misleading advertisements saying that systems 'cant' support Windows 10 when they perfectly can. For example, Microsoft added installer blocks to the OS's to try and force people to use Windows 10 on newer processors in a deal with Intel. So any chip that was made more recently would get an unsupported error and be 'forced' into using Windows 10. (The community has since made patches to get around this nonsense and allow older installs again.)

However, in that same deal, a lot of hardware manufacturers are in agreement to no longer make drivers for anything prior to Windows 10 on newer devices/hardware.

They also attempted to prevent certain frameworks/libraries from working on past versions of Windows or refused to update things further than a certain point to try and limit what people can do if they are still on Windows 7. (ie. Some games won't run by default, DirectX 12 isn't supported natively, newer .NET Frameworks aren't supported, etc. but all have varying community patches to allow/run etc.)

Ultimately, comes down to the user and what they feel is worth the effort to deal with all the workarounds required to keep using older operating systems. Windows 11 has already tried to do a similar tactic to force people into buying new hardware again with a non-legit requirement of newer CPUs and a TPM 2.0 module, both of which are not actually required.

It's doing nothing but creating more e-waste at the expense of the customer only, just to line the pockets of all involved in the agreements to try and get people to buy newer generation hardware. It's basically them creating forced obsolescence to keep people spending money. Who knows how much new telemetry shit is baked into Windows 11 too.

[bolo2002]

Originally Posted by atom0s

....(ie. Some games won't run by default, DirectX 12 isn't supported natively, newer .NET Frameworks aren't supported, etc. but all have varying community patches to allow/run etc.)

You know a method to run games win10 only that require dx12 on win8 by example?
thanks by advance.

[atom0s]

Originally Posted by bolo2002

You know a method to run games win10 only that require dx12 on win8 by example?
thanks by advance.

This is one of the methods that people were sharing/discovered a while back. This works by attempting to block the DX12 DWM check that MS added to try and prevent things from running DX12 if an older OS is detected. (I cannot confirm these files work or are safe, use with caution and test in a VM etc.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGuQ4SZVSWc&ab_channel=Jaguarek62

Keep in mind this may also require some additional work to the specific app/game too though depending on how its compiled and what libraries it uses. They may compile against a runtime that is designed for Windows 10 and has Win10 only API that you will either need to remove/bypass/emulate/etc. as well. They may also add their own checks for which OS is currently present to try and limit the game from running.

As an example, here is a project of mine that bypasses an application's limitation from running on anything but Windows 10. This is for Elgato's StreamDeck hardware/software. Elgato has the installer limited to only work on Windows 10 and also prevents the app from running properly in multiple ways. They attempt to block the app from working if it does not see its on Windows 10, it also does not show any plugins in the available list based on the OS information.

This is limited based on them using a newer version of Qt that is made for Windows 10 and also has its own code in place to check for a Windows 10 machine and not work for anything else.

My project emulates some of the API calls to fake which info is returned to make the software assume its Windows 10 and so on.

https://github.com/atom0s/ElgatoLegacy