I have been trying out Windows 11 preview today.

The concern is with how tightly they adhere to those principles.

Here, you can see it installed no problem at all, but you should not draw conclusions from this. This is the Insider version, a preview.

I switched the disk that was on, from MBR to GPT. And even after correcting the BCD, one of the OSes on the disk upon boot, recognized the disk partitioning scheme had changed, and insisted on screwing up the BCD. This means that something in there, keeps track of the structure of the disk from install time. Just moving the OS partition, from one MBR disk to a second MBR disk, is unexceptional. But it did detect being moved from MBR to GPT (even though a new BCD had been computed and was ready to go).

Paul

This new operating system is supposed to work hand in hand with UEFI safe boot and UEFI requires GPT file system on the primary drive.

M$ are being bombarded with heaps of criticism and I would expect them to make changes.

Thats because Defender software protection searches for unsigned software which M$ has deemed unwanted software and alters it so it cant be used.

X64 apps will run just fine on the new ARM-M1 Macs. They're not running in a VM, but using the same sort translation technology they used for the

I thought the same.

"S-Mode" and yes, you can escape to normal mode.

No.

Microsoft sits on a pile of money. It cares not for your comments.

It does care for the comments of Enterprise IT staff. That's what I've noticed. Even if the response sometimes is "borderline lame".

Back when Windows Update was broken on Windows 7, IT guys complained that some of their users "ran out of RAM at

Microsofts response, as an emergency patch, was to write a "memory compressor" of sorts, so the peak RAM usage would seem... smaller. But that's a space/time tradeoff and wastes CPU cycles. So now instead of running out of RAM, your machine is rendered gutless.

The new feature set (the sum of all hardware features) is part of a "security posture". Most of the changes are under the hood. The changes are part of making it harder for malware to get into the machine. It includes using containers and virtualization. But without exactly enabling Hyper-V on every machine. So some of the "new CPU features", they aren't even tick boxes on the ark.intel.com webpage. This makes it hard for people outside of Microsoft, to understand the pattern of CPUs selected as "elite enough for Windows 11".

To support older CPUs, it would mean a lot of "if-then-else" in the code, and having a different security posture for a 2012 machine, versus a 2018 machine. Since I knew something was incoming (because of a behavior I saw in the Insider), one of my first questions was "how will they handle all the different machine capabilities?". Well, now we know. Doom some machines to run Windows 10 until 2025. And save the rest for Windows 11. That's how they've chosen to do the split. And what that means, is they don't really care what you think.

The real question comes, when the user population is 50 million Windows 11 users and zero Windows 10 users, some years from now. What will the company do, with such a small user base ? We'll see I guess. Computers aren't cheap enough at the moment, for the user base to run out and buy a billion of them.

They're trading security posture versus user-base-size. Wish them luck.

Paul

Not to be confused with 10AM in the afternoon, eh?

Probably not at this stage... however if they are faced with a very large user base that "refuses" to upgrade to 11 (where refuses means won't go buy new hardware, or don't have the technical knowhow to reformat their boot drive as GPT, and enable secure boot in the BIOS, turn on EFI mode and Virtualisation etc) it will become more of an issue for them, since they will be stuck supporting old versions for longer.

If your new baseline is "better security" then you don't help that by abandoning a large pool of users with unpatched systems.

Yup, nothing wrong with the stance, but at the same time they could allow the user to make an informed choice, let them run it anyway, and trade off some of the security gain where there is no easy route through to full compliance with all the requirements.

There may be legal competition implications as well. UEFI Secure boot means that Microsoft have control of dual booting and other operating systems can only be booted with their permission. Currently they have provided such permissions, but there is nothing to stop them removing them at any time. It can also make it a difficult operation for many people to even install a second operating system.

But they have changed the Blue screen of Death to a new Black screen of Death, from what I have read elsewhere.

If this is true, how will we know the difference between the monitor going off and a BSOD ?

Andrew

because they can sell advertising space on the BSOD

On Thu, 1 Jul 2021 06:05:35 -0000 (UTC), jon snipped-for-privacy@nospam.cn wrote: [snip]

Can someone explain about this TPM stuff?

My PC says it is not present. On a 64 bit PC, is it likely this is installed but not activated or not installed? I tried to get into the BIOS but I cannot press F10 as it is a wireless keyboard and by the time the keyboard is recognised it is too late. Is there another way to get to the BIOS?

Is TPM hardware that can be purchased and added or is it part of the motherboard or part of the chip?

Should I be thinking about a new PC if mine is about 10 years old and works perfectly well?

The text on that black screen.

Because like the old BSOD, the new BSOD also has writing on it!

Depends on the PC. Most recent ish laptops will tend to include a TPM, as will many (business) name brand desktop machines.

Many motherboards will have a header onto which a TMP board can be connected, but they usually don't come with one unless you explicitly order one.

Plug in a wired keyboard and use that... (having said that a wireless keyboard should be recognised at the same time as any other USB keyboard)

Check your motherboard make and model, and download the manual for it (or look at the tech spec). That will tell you if it either has TPM built in, or a header to attach a module to.

Depends a bit on what the current spec is, and how well (and quickly) it does what you need. Also keep in mind that some upgrades like swapping from a hard drive to a solid state drive can make a very significant improvement in performance for relatively little cost.