Neowin: Rufus 3.18 bypasses Windows 11 TPM restrictions for in-place upgrade, fixes ISO bug

From Neowin:

The latest 3.18 pre-release (beta) version of Rufus, the popular bootable USB media creation software, adds the ability to bypass Windows 11 system requirements for in-place upgrades too.

Earlier, with version 3.16 Beta 2, Rufus had already received the option for bypassing the stringent system requirements for Windows 11 with the “Extended” installation feature. Though, the option was only available for clean installations. However, now with Rufus 3.18, the feature can be availed for in-place upgrades too.

Rufus 3.18 beta also fixes another Windows 11 related bug that broke the “ISO → ESP creation” feature. The bug (#1855) would prevent the creation of EFI system partition (ESP) on Windows 11 devices and throw an error code “0xC00305B4”.

Conversation 2 comments

  • longhorn

    05 March, 2022 - 2:25 pm

    <p>A step in the right direction.</p><p><br></p><p>From what I read months ago written by the Rufus dev there are a number of registry tweaks that Rufus can apply that disable various restrictions. At the time of writing the Rufus dev stated that there is no known registry tweak that lets you bypass CPU generation requirements without serious modifications to the installer.</p><p><br></p><p>TPM and other restrictions have registry tweaks put in place by Microsoft so these can be easily circumvented. It’s the CPU generation requirements that still(?) haven’t been solved.</p><p><br></p><p>From the 3.16 changelog it looks that way:</p><p>"Add Windows 11 "Extended" installation support (Disables TPM/Secure Boot/RAM requirements)"</p><p>(sadly nothing about CPU requirements, just in-place upgrade improvements for 3.18)</p><p><br></p>

  • waethorn

    05 March, 2022 - 11:12 pm

    <p>I really don’t get the point about all of the issues over “extra processing” needed to create a bootable USB thumb drive. So many of these types of programs say that they make a 64-bit ISO as GPT formatted when Microsoft’s own tool only uses MBR partitioning. A removable disk is not a fixed disk. Supposedly the boot option for UEFI for a Windows installation has to be GPT. This is NOT a restriction for Windows Setup media though. Making it MBR means you can install it on an MBR system OR a GPT system. What’s dumb is that you can literally replace everything on a Windows 11 installation disk except the Install.esd or .wim with the Windows 10 installation software and not have any of the restrictions that Windows 11 Setup has in it.</p><p><br></p><p>To make a USB thumbdrive bootable for a Windows just use diskpart, assuming you don’t want to keep anything on it. Use clean to wipe it. Use create partition primary, the make it active. Finally, use assign to give it a drive letter. That’s it. Copy the contents to it and it’ll boot.</p>

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