The title says it all. Trying to get Win11 to work on a 1st gen Ryzen, inside KVM, using virt-manager.
I know that just setting up a CPU identifier inside QEMU will not magically make an OS work. When the OS sees the CPU features, it can then enable certain kernel options.
However, there shouldn’t be any major difference (or maybe none at all, in terms of CPU features) between Ryzen 1600 (zen1) and 1600AF (zen+). When opening “PC Heath” and checking the win11 requirements, the only thing that’s failing is the CPU. Even swtpm shows up as a 2.0 compatible TPM, so passing the TPM requirement just fine.
The reason behind trying to set a fake CPU identifier is to avoid the potential MS ban on not sending updates to unsupported PC configurations. It’d be ridiculous to upgrade to win11 and then never receive updates. And MS is making this even more of a pain with their future “pay to keep using” “”“the last version of windows”“” (if anyone remembers that).
I’m hoping to use the power of linux to save some PCs from hitting the landfill, for users that can’t do without windows (even if performance won’t be the best). And with windows as VMs, they’d have an incentive to primarily use the host OS.
I posted this without realizing. Sorry for any typos.
The big question is: has anyone successfully gotten something like this to work? If so, how? Editing the QEMU XML file to a random CPU won’t just work, qemu will refuse to start a VM without a known CPU.
Pretty sure you can modify the windows installer to not need tpm and a windows account, I’ve never modified the install myself I’ve only done the command line to bypass the account requirements
I don’t think they’ll ban you after the fact
It’s more of a push for from OEM vendors to stop using old systems and buy new
Microsoft wants as many people on their adware I mean OS as possible
Why do you think they’ve done nothing to stop activators
The same activator from the launch of win10 works on win11
You can use windows without activating it anyway
Ads and data is where they make their money
Game services on the other hand is a different story some day they’ll work around the workarounds and find out if you’re in a VM
At the moment you just get kicked from lobby on Fortnite but other games get bans
leve1techs does not condone piracy or activators/cracks
From the quickemu README: tpm="on" instructs quickemu to create a software emulated TPM device using swtpm.
Here is where they set the cli arguments for qemu:
I know the inertia is real, but the solution to keep those PCs alive is to dump Winblowz…
EDIT: Also someone correct me if I’m wrong, but unless you have cash to burn you will have to rebuild those VMs every 90 days as the license for virtualization is prohibitive for small organizations.
IDK how accurate that is. Major OEMs generally stop selling old cpu skews after a while. It’s unknown Chinese brands that MS doesn’t even really care about (because they usually come with unactivated windows or cracked versions anyway) that use older cpus for longer. This would be a big hit for them (in the short term).
True. Particularly atrocious is asking users to pay to keep using win10. Ridiculous.
I don’t care enough about games or multiplayer in general to care about kernel-level spyware. Unlike game studios, I doubt MS will go to great lengths (as of now) to crackdown on users using VMs. But their own EULA when you try to upgrade to win11 forcefully (by enabling the CPU check skip) will tell you that you can basically get blocked from receiving system updates, which is where the whole “mask your cpu” idea came to mind.
I don’t care about initial install bypass. Even on upgrades, you can bypass the requirement with the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Setup\MoSetup: DWORD “AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU” = 1.
The problem is to keep getting upgrades despite forcing your way in the upgrade to win11, which MS explicitly specifies and I expect them to do some shenanigans around the same time as win10 becomes pay-2-keep-using.
Already using swtpm, works great! But again, I’m looking for tricking windows in believing it’s running on something like a ryzen 5 1600AF, when it’s actually running on a 1st gen zen instead.
Part of this thread is to see if we can install linux as the main OS (with a full desktop environment) and only keep a win11 VM inside for “can’t do’s” with linux (like, idk, adobe acrobat pdf editing and digital signage or something).
I’ll be testing win11 without a supported CPU for a while and try to see if updates will actually not get released to this system. I’m almost certain you can force major feature release upgrades via the ISOs that MS releases every now and then, that you can download from them. Maybe you can even force updates with something like WSUS Offline (if it was updated to support win11).
But I’d rather make sure that this is working OOTB with a single set-and-forget config (the CPU id change) and not have the users have to jump through hoops to get updates if M$ decides to cut updates.