[Official Release] Rufus v4.6 Now Supports Bypassing Windows 11 Restrictions Locally Without Reinstallation
Brook.X
The open-source installation tool, Rufus, now allows for the automatic modification of the registry to bypass Microsoft's hardware installation restrictions when burning Windows 11 images to a USB drive. However, this modification was initially only applicable to fresh installations, not upgrades.
Previously, attempting to upgrade directly from Windows 11 version 23H2 to 24H2 using a USB drive prepared in this manner would result in a failure to meet system hardware requirements.
To address this issue, Rufus introduced a new setup.exe wrapper in its v4.6 release, enabling local restriction bypass for direct upgrades, thus eliminating the need for a fresh system installation.
It's important to note that Windows 11 version 24H2 has ceased support for CPUs lacking the SSE4.2 instruction set, affecting some very old CPUs (released around 2005) which will not be able to install or upgrade due to this limitation.
Rufus will not release a solution for this specific issue because, fundamentally, Microsoft has provided methods to bypass requirements like TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot, but not for the SSE4.2 issue.
Given this context, pursuing unofficial solutions is deemed less meaningful. Rufus will continue its development within Microsoft's framework, hence not offering bypass methods for unsupported Microsoft specifications.
Rufus v4.6 Version Update Log:
- Added a new setup.exe wrapper to bypass local upgrade restrictions for Windows 11 version 24H2.
- Added timezone information to regional options for directly copying local timezone information.
- Set local account passwords to never expire, thus users won't periodically receive prompts to change passwords (this option can also be manually adjusted in Windows User Management).
- Fixed errors that occurred when attempting to write compressed VHD images.
- Fixed errors that appeared when invoking Rufus from PowerShell commands.
- Improved the revoked UEFI boot loader checker to support Linux SBAT, Windows SVN, and the certificate DBX.
Download Address: https://dl.lancdn.com/landian/soft/rufus/4.6/