Windows 11 24H2 upgrade more demanding

Windows 11 24H2 is getting tougher on some older PCs with support.

Microsoft has officially confirmed that the next major version of Windows will be named Windows 11 24H2 (expected to be released in September), not Windows 12 as earlier speculated.

According to media reports, Windows 11 24H2 on some old computers will change from "unsupported" to "can not start".

As we all know, when Windows 11 was released, it got a lot of flak because of the high system requirements. However, later on, bypassing some system checks, you can run Windows 11 on older computers without any problem, including Windows XP era Core 2 Duo old machine can also run Windows 11.

However, starting with Windows 11 24H2, CPUs with the "POPCNT" instruction will be a requirement for Windows 11 24H2, and processors missing this instruction will not be able to boot the new system.

It is reported that the "POPCNT" instruction was first used in K10-based processors based on the Enderleon Phenom, Sleek Athlon and Sempron, and appeared in Intel Core processors based on the Nehalem architecture at the end of 2008.

This also means that Intel Core 2 Duo and earlier AMD Athlon 64 processors, for example, can no longer boot Windows 11 24H2.

Some users speculate that Microsoft engineers enabled some newer CPU instructions during the compilation process, thus dropping support for multiple older processors.

It is reported that Windows 11 24H2 will be opened for pre-installation (OEM) in June, and officially mass pushed to existing Windows 11 users in September.