Microsoft doesn’t just reserve watermarks for inactive or inactive versions of Windows, and The Verge has learned that the latest Windows 11 Release Preview (22000.588) applies a watermark to your desktop if you’re using a solution to run the operating system on unsupported hardware, according to an engadged report.
Try it and you’ll see a “System requirements not met” notification that asks you to visit Settings to find out more, the report said, however there doesn’t seem to be any feature limitation.
The company began testing the watermark in raw Windows 11 builds released in February, and its inclusion in the Release Preview indicates that Microsoft is ready to bring the alert to a completed software update in the near future.
Windows 11 officially requires either an 8th generation Intel Core CPU, an AMD chip based on the Zen+ architecture, or Zen 2.
Many believe the cut is arbitrary, and they have used the Microsoft-certified registry disk to bypass the CPU check and install the operating system without a rejection message.
Microsoft cautioned that it may not provide updates for these computers but that the software should still work.
In practice, a purely cosmetic sign like this is more of a disclaimer than a deterrent, and a reminder that Microsoft won’t help you if software misbehaves on an unsupported device.
And if you’re comfortable bypassing the CPU check in the first place, you can probably remove the watermark as well.
However, this can be annoying if you are running Windows 11 on a shoddy PC without hassles.