I built a new PC this past month and installed Win11. My last build was Win10. No hardware issues, but the TPM requirement has made me consider Linex. My son tried to get me to do this on this build. I wish I had taken his advice - I still may.
Once every 5 years, I use an old Adobe CS5 application called Encore to master DVDs for my high school reunion. I am familiar with it and use it so infrequently, I can't justify buying anything newer. The only reason I document the reunion on a DVD is that we are all old and it is the medium of choice for our group of people that still oooo and ahhh to After Effects memorials.
Anyway, a driver for that application made Win11 throw up. While installing, it gave me an error that the driver "didn't load". Okay, so it doesn't load until I figure this thing out. Reboot and my new build doesn't boot - at all. I can't even get it to safe mode to delete the offending driver because that's not a thing anymore to hold a couple of keys down to get into safe mode. There are options on the screen, but none got me to Safe. The cmd option did not allow access to the primary drive.
I have an OEM disk of Windows 11 Pro. All builds that I can remember (beginning with Win97) had admin tools on the OEM disk to be able to get to the primary drive. That no longer exists either. I ultimately had to go back to a restore point that was about 6 hours before. I hate doing things over. This time, when I installed the application and before reboot, I renamed the offending driver. Booted fine afterward.
This is a driver from a trusted company. Microsoft has gone all "Apple" on me by disabling anything older than an arbitrary date.
To my question: How can I get around this? Is there a place on the MS site that I can report this driver for consideration of inclusion? I can't turn off TPM because Win11 requires it.
As an aside, it is good to see familiar WinMag (I think that was the name of the original forum) names. It is sad to see little to no activity in the forum. WinMag was the place I went for my first build in 1998. Because this community was so helpful to me, I never bought another retail desktop.
My understanding is TPM, while running Windows 11, can be easily shut off in the BIOS, once 11 has been installed. Obviously you would lose some of the nanny security features like the one you are experiencing. Also, it looks like programs such as Bitlocker and other encryption programs will not work with TPM disabled.