Windows 10 Refuses to Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Just use the ISO and Rufus.

Make me lose respect even more for Microsoft, to think of all the wasted resources and money people thought they needed to because of “requirements”

Many of the security features on Windows 11 that require these hardware changes, are already available on Windows 10 as optional.

The reasoning is that they shouldn't be turned off, and this is a way to force OEMs to actually provide the hardware on their motherboards.

What it isn't said is that PC sales have been down for a while and Covid was kind of the exception due to the way everyone needed to work from home.

As workarounds for TPM requirement, one can either:

- open a Command Prompt window during the Windows installer and run regedit (various Youtube vids cover it)

- use Rufus to create a boot USB from a Windows ISO that bypasses TPM (which does the same regedit hack behind-the-scenes by conveniently embedding it in an install script "\sources\$OEM$\$$\Panther\unattend.xml")

That's how I got Windows 11 installed on a very old 2009 computer. I had to upgrade a friend's computer to Win 11 because the upcoming TurboTax 2025 requires it and there's no need to buy a new computer just to satisfy Microsoft.

>And that may break with any update.

Yes, and that's an acceptable risk calculation to avoid prematurely buying a new computer because:

"Windows 11 TPM hack _might_ be broken in the future but _maybe_never_ " -- better than -- "Windows 10 _absolutely_will_ be broken"

Unless you are personally prepared to go round to the homes of people who have had their computer for a decade, don't understand command lines, and just use their long-running PC to surf the net and edit the occasional document, it doesn't actually solve anything.

I honestly thought Microsoft would blink on this but I guess their leadership believes everyone is going to run out and buy an entirely new computer just to run Windows 11. My older parents (for example) aren't going to throw away their perfectly functional desktops/laptops and will instead continue to use Windows 10 with the attendant security risks (they won't pay $30 for security updates) unless I convince them to switch to Linux.

I'm thinking I'll probably repave it with Bazzite or something like it. But so far I keep procrastinating that as it stopped being my daily workhorse. It's funny that when I bought that desktop Microsoft was still in the "Windows 10 will last the lifetime of your device" marketing pitch. Such a fascinating broken promise that they could have kept in multiple ways. It sounds like they may let the market talk them into the awful Windows XP life support version of it where they may be offering extended security support for years to come.

But they still work and honestly, I don't see much downside to running them without any updates for a while.

Eventually I'll replace them and maybe they will get win 11 or 12. Or Linux as that's what everything else is already running.

One of the things I loved about being on macOS was how boring it was to upgrade - at least until you waited for the .1 update.

Windows upgrades feel less like upgrades and more like full migrations.

However it is possible for the more technically minded without too much effort with an adapted "unattend.xml" file during setup. This skips TPM requirements account setup and a number of other annoyances.

See: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/

If you take the effort to do this subsequent installations will be a walk in the park.

It really should just be built-in like Spotlight on MacOS but then you wouldn't see as many Bing ads.

It really wasn't. Basically all the claims of "Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows" traces back to that quote, but that was basically an offhand comment by a low to mid level salesperson (think account "executive"), and was not substantiated by other communications from microsoft, contrary to what your article claims. "ongoing manner" doesn't mean "forever". Microsoft also had clearly outlined lifecycle policies that certainly did not promise forever support.

I think it's more likely that the devrel guy who made that remark was just being overly enthusiastic about the OS getting feature updates over time. For some computers, that policy meant that they didn't even get the promised 10-year support duration, as the footnote on that page mentions:

> Updates are cumulative, with each update built upon all of the updates that preceded it. A device needs to install the latest update to remain supported. Updates may include new features, fixes (security and/or non-security), or a combination of both. Not all features in an update will work on all devices. A device may not be able to receive updates if the device hardware is incompatible, lacking current drivers, or otherwise outside of the Original Equipment Manufacturer’s (“OEM”) support period. Update availability may vary, for example by country, region, network connectivity, mobile operator (e.g., for cellular-capable devices), or hardware capabilities (including, e.g., free disk space).