WHY, WHY, WHY?

Microsoft is being tight-lipped about why it has restricted Windows 11 to CPUs made in the past four years or so, but it probably comes down to two things. Windows 11 PCs are meant to be secure. Very secure, with TPM 2.0 and virtualization-based security, which isolates a region of memory for Windows to operate its security solutions in, so they can’t be accessed even through an OS vulnerability.

MS also doesn’t want Windows 11 PCs to crash, and one of the most common causes of crashes is a bad driver. The concept of Driver Package Isolation is not new, but we can expect to see much more of it in Windows 11. It means drivers run from a centralized Driver Store rather than System32, can only write data to system-mandated areas, and can only interact with other drivers using systemsupplied functions or interfaces.