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A significant portion (43 percent) of all business devices still cannot upgrade to Windows 11 due to hardware requirements imposed by Microsoft, according to new Research (opens in new tab) published by IT management company Lansweeper.
TechRadar Pro earlier reported in March 2022 that many millions of business PCs were ineligible to upgrade to Windows 11, in part because their processors did not have Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 (opens in new tab) compatibility, a feature that Windows 11 requires.
Lansweeper claims the situation has eased since we covered the last report, with the percentage of devices clearing CPU and TPM requirements increasing by 12%. At this level of growth, all devices should be compatible with Windows 11 by 2026.
Windows 11 in the workplace
However, Lansweeper still found that only 57% of the devices tested had CPUs that met Microsoft’s requirements. More than a third (35%) of the workstations tested were incompatible with TPM or had it disabled, while virtual machines fared worse – with only 1% supporting or having TPM enabled.
In addition, the growth rate of Windows 11-compatible devices that Lansweeper has seen still lags behind the Windows 10 end-of-life deadline: October 14, 2025. By this date, Windows 10 will no longer receive critical security and feature updates. .
This is important, as 82% of all Windows devices are still running Windows 10. Steady growth for compatible devices is not guaranteed, and any devices still running the previous OS iteration will become increasingly vulnerable to malware and ransomware attacks.
This is in large part why many cyber-attacks target healthcare and Educational settings. Organizations fail to update operating systems, usually to maintain a software or database solution that “just works”, thus becoming an easy target for malicious threat actors who value their sensitive personal data.
Only 3% of all Windows users are currently using Windows 11. In comparison, 1% of users are still using 21-year-old Windows XP, so we can say that companies still don’t know why they should invest in new hardware .
As counterproductive as it may seem, especially in a recession, organizations are encouraged to update the hardware that powers their business to have long-term confidence in their security posture, and to save money in other areas, such as their software solutions.