Rufus adds Windows 11 24H2 unsupported PC bypass for in-place upgrades, local account fix

Yesterday, we reported on the latest Media Creation Tool (MCT) update which now helps you download and install the first Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 version 24H2. You can find details about that post in this dedicated article.

However, an official tool like MCT only works with systems which are supported by Microsoft that fulfill the minimum requirements. The tech giant recently updated a support page where it recommends buying a new PC for those who are looking to upgrade to Windows 11 from pre-Windows 10 since such systems are unlikely to satisfy Windows 11's upgrade criteria.

Such users can opt for third-party utilities like Rufus which recently published a workaround for bypassing Windows 11 24H2 system requirements on unsupported PCs. The developer promised that the next release of Rufus would have the workaround baked in.

As such, the latest version of the app, 4.6 Beta, has received the feature as well as several others including improvements related to local account passwords, UEFI bootloaders, a PowerShell fix, and more.

The full changelog is given below:

Rufus 4.6 BETA

• Add a new setup.exe wrapper to bypass Windows 11 24H2 in-place upgrade restrictions (#2568)
• Add TimeZone to regional options replication (#2499)
• Set local account passwords to not expire by default
• Fix an error when trying to write compressed VHD images (#2468)
• Fix an error when invoking Rufus from the PowerShell commandline (#2556)
• Improve revoked UEFI bootloaders check to support Linux SBAT, Windows SVN and cert DBX

Keep in mind though that Windows 11 24H2 is different from its predecessors since Microsoft has added a new CPU instruction set requirement with PopCnt and SSE4.2. Thus, very old PCs with CPUs that lack the required ISA (instruction set architecture) won't be able to bypass the requirement even with the latest version of Rufus.

Rufus author Pete Batard has also reiterated that such a bypass is not going to come to his app. He writes:

I'm not planning to. If the official bypasses that Microsoft allows don't work, it's Microsoft's problem not mine. Rufus is working within Microsoft's framework, with bypasses that Microsoft included for the installer, and, therefore, as has been the case ever since the release of Windows 11, I expect that the bypasses that Microsoft allows to not render a machine inoperative, and I also expect Microsoft to filter bypasses that will, like PopCount/SSE4.2.

You can download the latest version of Rufus from the Neowin software stories page, the official website or GitHub.