For supported computers, Microsoft simply is unable to address the “hardware security not supported” flaw in Windows 11.

If you have been reading Neowin for a significant amount of time, you presumably have a good understanding of Windows 11 and the system requirements that are connected with it. In a nutshell, they are extremely precise, to the point where even Microsoft personnel are occasionally caught off guard by their criteria. And although stricter eligibility requirements aren’t necessarily a negative thing in and of itself, Windows 11 is still plagued with bugs, and even a machine that’s fully compatible with Windows can sometimes display the same issues as an unsupported computer.

This is the situation with an old fault that has persisted in the security app of Windows 11, which displays the error “Standard hardware security not supported” even on computers that are compatible with the feature. We reported on this bug a year ago in June, and although though Microsoft should have previously repaired the issue more than once, members of the Neowin community have posted in an ongoing forum thread that they are seeing the difficulties in current releases as well.

The user DeusVult reports that they are now encountering this issue on their system, in which an error message stating “Standard hardware security is not satisfied” is shown. This occurs because, according to the user, their “device does not appear to match the standards”

DeusVult, on the other hand, claims that their computer meets all of the requirements and hypothesizes that a recent Windows reset could be to blame for the presence of this flaw. They have written:

Same crazy problem, everything is updated and working well, might it be because I reseted [sic] windows? and if it’s so, does anybody has a solution for this?

BIOS Updated

TPM 2 working

UEFI ok

Secure Boot ok

DEP ok

Resetting the laptop for another member, Raulll03, resulted in the same “standard hardware security not set issue.” This happened even after the laptop had been shut down. According to Raulll03, they have the most recent version of Windows 11, which includes the Patch Tuesday update, which is also known as the Moment 2 feature upgrade. Here is what they have to say:

Hi everyone! I have a problem with the hardware security standard, because it’s not supported. I reset my laptop due to personal issues, but before resetting it the standard hardware security was supported. My laptop has all the latest updates installed, Windows 11 Home 22H2 22621.1265.

The following comment was made by Jennifer Gentleman, a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, in response to an earlier report that received a significant number of affirmative votes. In her response, she also makes a passing reference to the fact that the defect has the potential to be a persistent one, despite the fact that it should be fixed automatically in the near future by a Windows Security update:

Thanks for taking the time to report this – we’ve investigated and with Build 25169 (which just went live for the Dev Channel) have fixed an issue believed to be the root cause of Windows Security saying standard hardware security wasn’t supported on devices where it was actually supported, as well as showing a warning in the taskbar but not showing any issues when Windows Security was launched.

Please note, due to timing of the payload, these issues may come back after the next Windows Security update. It will go away again after a future Windows Security update.

UPDATE: If you are seeing this again in the Dev Channel, please see the note above. Appreciate your patience