Known Windows 11 issue prevents millions of users from upgrading

If you were about to move on from Windows 10 and enjoy the latest experience, you will surely want to know that you might not even be able to upgrade at all.

Microsoft just found a new issue that may cause some problems for users trying to transition to the new operating system.

The Redmond-based tech company is therefore blocking Windows 11 upgrades for customers who use applications that create registry keys using some non-ASCII characters.

Windows 11 is now unavaiable for some users

As Redmond officials explain, on impacted systems such apps might be unable to open and could also cause other issues or errors in Windows 11, version 21H2, including BSOD errors.

Compatibility issues have been found between apps using some non-ASCII characters in their registry keys or subkeys and Windows 11.

Affected apps might be unable to open and might cause other issues or errors in Windows, including the possibility of receiving an error with a blue screen.

And as if things weren’t bad enough, in some cases, registry keys with non-ASCII characters might also be irreparable.

Even though it doesn’t say it on the known issue’s Windows Health dashboard entry, Microsoft has merged it with a previous bug preventing Cốc Cốc browser users to upgrade to Windows 11.

If your organization is using Update Compliance, the safeguard ID for devices with Cốc Cốc browser is 35891494.

The tech giant has applied a compatibility hold to safeguard the users’ experience by blocking affected Windows devices from being offered or installing the new OS.

Users are also advised not to attempt to manually upgrade via the Update now button or to use the Media Creation Tool until a fix is available.

Apart from this serious problem, Microsoft is investigating seven other known issues caused by hardware or software incompatibilities that could lead to system instability or crashes.

Among these, we can mention issues that cause the taskbar to not be updated, the Start menu not opening, performance loss on AMD CPUs, as well as other critical errors.

Also, the Windows 11 File Explorer is using too much memory, some incompatibility problems with Oracle VirtualBox VMs, and slower internet speeds with Intel Killer and Dell’SmartByte apps are being remediated as we speak.

We will let you know as soon as we have more information about the measures that Microsoft took for dealing with these situations.

Have you experienced errors when upgrading to Windows 11 due to registry keys using non-ASCII characters? Let us know in the comments section below.