The first featured update for Windows 11 hit the Release Preview Channel on June 7, and it opened Windows Insider testing to a bigger “seeker” audience. Turns out, though, that Microsoft might have opened up testing a little bit too much, as a bug has caused some people to get offered Windows 11 Version 22H2 on unsupported devices through Windows Update.
This was first spotted by the folks at Neowin who discovered a Reddit thread where Windows 11 users were talking about getting Windows 11 22H2 on Windows 10 hardware that’s not considered supported by Microsoft. One unsupported PC seeing the OS update and upgrade included a Surface Book 2, and another was powered by a laptop with a much older fourth-generation Intel Core i7 chip. At the time, It seemed to be hit or miss though, as Neowin tried to replicate this, and failed. But we now officially know that it was all unintended, with an unknown bug causing this to happen on Microsoft’s end.
It's a bug and the right team is investigating it. Thanks for notifying.
— Windows Insider Program (@windowsinsider) June 8, 2022
Just to be certain, in another thread, Microsoft indicated that the requirements for running Windows 11 have not changed at all. So, if this happened to your unsupported PC, then don’t be too excited. You might want to roll back your Windows device to Windows 10 within 10 days, as running Windows 11 in Microsoft’s “unsupported” state could mean you’ll not get security updates (though we’ve seen this isn’t true.) Nonetheless, it is interesting to see that this was allowed to happen in the first place.
Were you impacted by this “bug” and managed to get Windows 11 on an unsupported device through Windows Update? Let us know in the comments below.
