Microsoft Starts Emailing Windows 11 Insiders Who Don't Meet Hardware Requirements

Microsoft's hardware requirements for Windows 11 are strict, and now the company is starting to enforce them. Yesterday, and some Windows 11 insiders with PCs that didn't meet those standards got a notification that they should downgrade to Windows 10 if they don't meet hardware requirements. Today Microsoft started emailing insiders to again alert them to downgrade if they use unsupported hardware.

As reported by MSPowerUser, some participants in the Windows 11 Insider Preview builds are now getting email notifications from Microsoft that read as follows:

Your PC does not meet the minimum system requirements for previewing Windows 11. 

Hi Windows Insider,

Some PCs in the Dev Channel do not have an option to switch channels as they were given an exception to install Windows 11 preview builds as outlined in our blog post here on June 24th (the red column in the chart). These PCs do not meet the minimum hardware requirements for previewing Windows 11 builds and will not receive new Windows 11 Insider Preview builds from the Dev Channel going forward.

Based on our data, you have a PC that was given that exception. This PC must clean install back to Windows 10 with the media (ISOs) that we provide and can then join the Release Preview Channel to preview Windows 10 updates.

Please review the message in your Windows Update Settings to learn more.

Thank you for your participation in the Windows Insider Program!

The Windows Insider team

If you happen to be a part of the Windows 11 Insider program and are using unsupported hardware, it is advertised that you revert to Windows 10 and keep using the OS until you either change the hardware or just continue rocking with the older OS version.

Recently, Microsoft added support for Intel's 7th generation of Core processors, adding more supported hardware to the new Windows 11 list, enabling more customers to upgrade their PCs.

As the OS arrives on October 5, it is important to note that even the ones who can't officially upgrade their machines can still find a workaround by using the media creation tool to etch the Windows 11 ISO image onto the bootable USB drive and install the OS that way. Of course, this will limit future OS updating as Microsoft will not support this on unsupported hardware, but it's possible.