It goes a long way back, Johnny! Microsoft caused quite a commotion when it mandated technologies like TPM and Secure Boot as base requirements for its modern operating system.
When the company announced Windows 11 for the first time in June last year, attention was focused on the minimum system requirements that the software titan had established for its shiny new operating system.
These strict requirements meant that even a couple of generations-old CPUs were deemed unsupported for Windows 11.
Although the company revised its compatible processors list and added more Intel chips, requirements like Trusted Platform Module version 2.0 and Secure Boot remained unchanged. The company later explained how these technologies improved security on the new OS.
And it went so far as to demonstrate a successful hacker attack on a system with these disabled.
If you are wondering exactly when Redmond got the idea of adding these requirements to its platform, we now have some insights.
Did you know that Cobalt build 21327 is the earliest public build to mention that a TPM module would block your system from installing "Sun Valley"? pic.twitter.com/loUqZvM78c
— Xeno (@XenoPanther) August 27, 2022
Microsoft first baked them in back in the Windows 10 days, with build 21327 being the first version where these hardware requirements were first sighted. The appraiserres.dll file contained these system checks and blocked you from installing Sun Valley if you did not pass them.
This was discovered by famed leaker Xeno, who went back in time to spot these requirements.
Of course, having a requirement in place is entirely different from enforcing it. That’s because the community quickly found bypasses to these checks, with even the company endorsing the TPM bypass to install Windows 11 on older machines.
While it has become clear that these restrictions are in place mainly for business customers, game developers are also using these technologies to prevent cheating.
At the end of the day, things quietly settled in place.
As they usually do.
