With just a little more than a year left before Windows 10 hits its end-of-life, Microsoft has been busy encouraging people to upgrade to Windows 11. One of the hurdles with getting PCs upgraded to Windows 11, though, are the hardware requirements — and now they’re cracked down on harder.
A recent beta build of Windows 11 has patched the well-used “setup.exe /product server” workaround that allowed you to completely bypass the system requirements check and run Windows 11 on a non-compliant machine — in other words, a machine without TPM 2.0.
The patch was noticed by X (formerly Twitter) user Bob Pony, and while it’s only in an Insider build at the moment, it will likely be fully rolled out sometime soon.
The recently released Windows 11 Insider Build 27686 (Dilithium) has patched the "setup.exe /product server" workaround for bypassing the system requirements check. 😢 pic.twitter.com/G9Q1v3O1uU
— Bob Pony (@TheBobPony) August 15, 2024
The little TPM (Trusted Platform Module) microchip deals with encryption-related tasks and has become a common security standard in recent years. Its inclusion in the Windows 11 system requirements isn’t a problem for most people since just about any PC bought within the last eight years will meet the TPM 2.0 standard. However, it has been a thorn in the side for those with older or custom-made PCs that easily meet every other requirement.
Over the past few years, there have been multiple ways to get Windows 11 running on such machines, but Microsoft has been slowly but surely cutting them off one by one. This latest patch could prove troublesome for a lot of people since it’s such a simple and commonly used workaround — just one extra argument added to the setup execute file and you’re set.
If you find your machine affected whenever this goes live, you have a few options, but they all involve some level of effort or cost. You can find another workaround — it will probably be more complicated but there’s sure to be plenty of walkthroughs online. You could also upgrade your machine to meet the requirements — more information on that here. You could even try switching to Linux, or just going back to Windows 10 for now.
The last option is likely the easiest, and you’d just be joining the many people who never upgraded to Windows 11 in the first place precisely because of the TPM requirement. Microsoft hasn’t made any mention of this patch yet and we don’t know when it might come to a normal Windows update, but we’ll keep you updated.
Speech-to-text apps have flooded the App Store, making it easier than ever to type on our Macs with just our voice. I have previously covered one such app called TypeWhisper. However, there has been a dearth of good text-to-speech models, and most of the good ones are locked behind a subscription.
Ollama, an open-source app that lets you run local AI models on your computer, wants to change that. It works on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and your prompts are never stored or used for training.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).