A new beta version of the Rufus installation images burning tool was recently released with several new features, the most important of which is the ability to bypass Windows 11 restrictions for in-place upgrades.
Rufus is a free and open-source tool that helps create bootable USB flash drives from ISO images. It supports most Linux distributions, in addition to Windows, and to MS-DOS compatible operating systems.
This tool supports burning Windows installation images, from Windows XP SP2 and above, including the recently released Windows 11.
After the release of Windows 11, Microsoft announced an update to the minimum specifications required to install the new system, the most important of which is that the computer must have a modern processor, TPM 2.0, and it must support secure boot too, to be compatible with Windows 11.
Many users did not like this, which made Microsoft allow Windows 11 to be installed on non-compatible devices by making some modifications in the system registry.
Not all users are good at modifying the registry, which is a dangerous process by the way, as any wrong modification may cause problems in the operating system, which made some developers offer a way to help users create a Windows installation disk with the necessary registry modifications to bypass the restrictions and minimum specifications imposed by Microsoft on Users' computers to be able to install Windows 11 on almost any device, and among these developers, the Rufus tool developers.
Rufus supports creating custom Windows 11 USB flash drives to bypass the minimum OS specification since version 3.16, but the bootable USB that the application creates can only be used to perform a clean install of Windows 11, i.e., install the system from scratch.
The new beta version of Rufus 3.18 also comes with a way to bypass Windows 11 restrictions for in-place upgrades. This means that USB flash drives created with Rufus 3.18 Beta and above, can be used to upgrade to Windows 11 without the need to format your PC (likely), and it can also help you upgrade to newer Windows 11 versions without the need to perform a clean install.
Rufus 3.18 Beta comes as well, with the following features and fixes:
- Fix DLL sideloading vulnerabilities
- Fix ISO → ESP creation when running on Windows 11
- Fix an issue when detecting network connectivity when the DHCP service is disabled
- Update FreeDOS to version 1.3
- Add Miracle Linux 8 to the list of Red Hat exceptions
As mentioned above, Rufus is a free and open-source tool, beta 3.18 of which can be downloaded from its GitHub repository at the following link:
{getButton} $icon={download} $text={Download Rufus 3.18 BETA} $color={#6B9D58}
