Windows 11 24H2 won't boot if the PC does not support this CPU feature

[harlan4096]

Microsoft is changing the system requirements of the upcoming Windows 11 24H2 feature update. When Microsoft released Windows 11, it changed the minimum system requirements significantly. This locked out millions of Windows 10 devices from the upgrade to Windows 11.

Now it appears, that Microsoft is modifying the system requirements of Windows 11 again. This is the first time that Microsoft is changing the system requirements of an already released operating system.

Here is what happened: Back in February 2024, testers of Windows 11 started to notice that the operating system would not install anymore on certain devices. The issue was identified quickly as a new restriction regarding a device's processor.

If the processor did not support so-called POPCNT instructions, Windows 11 test build installations would fail. Upgrades from earlier versions of Windows 11 would fail as well.

In other words: the new system requirements introduced in Windows 11 24H2 would prevent some customers from upgrading their devices to the new version.

It became clear soon thereafter that the main new requirement is  SSE4.2.  The processor needs to support SSE4.2 to upgrade a device to Windows 11 version 24H2 or install the operating system on such a device.

Processors released in the last decade support the instruction. Processors that do not support it are not officially supported by Windows 11. Still, it was possible, until now, to bypass the requirements and install Windows 11 on these devices.

Windows 11 won't boot if the processor does not support SSE 4.2

Twitter user BobPony discovered that Windows 11 build 26080 is now preventing the booting of the operating system, if the processor does not support SSE4.2.

Windows 11 will reboot the device automatically on unsupported devices according to the Twitter user's tests.
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