How to Remove “System requirements not met” Watermark in Windows 11

Windows 11 is leaps ahead in terms of design language, under the hood development, and even user convenience when compared to previous iterations of Windows. Maybe that was the reason it had much more stringent specifications and supported only a handful of older released hardware.

That being said, recently many Windows 11 users have noticed a peculiar watermark saying ‘System Requirements not met’ on PCs not meeting the minimum requirement for running Windows 11.

While many were unphased by the watermark, there is an equal number of people going bonkers when they see the watermark on their desktop or in some cases the Settings app.

Fortunately, there is a quick registry fix that will help you remove this watermark from your system. However, before diving deep into the registry menu, it is definitely worth knowing why did the watermark appear on your PC in the first place.

Why does “System requirements not met” watermark appears in Windows 11?

As every Windows 11 user is aware that Windows 11 had very strict requirements compared to every other previous iteration of Windows in order to provide a layer of security at the kernel level to all the users.

However, since then, there have been a ton of workarounds to bypass some of those requirements in order to install the operating system on an unsupported device. Moreover, before Windows 11 went public, Microsoft itself allowed some Windows Insiders to install and run Windows 11 on their unsupported devices as they provided crucial input for the development of it.

That being said, it doesn’t seem Microsoft wishes to allow the installation of Windows 11 on unsupported devices anymore, and hence, it is now displaying the watermark, “System requirements not met” to remind the user that they should not be using Windows 11 and maybe are on borrowed time.

Fortunately, the watermark does not have any impact on your system performance and lock you out of personalization settings, or impact any such essential feature, yet. Moreover, the watermark seems to appear on the PCs of users who have bypasses the TPM requirement of Windows 11.

Thankfully, removing it from your PC is not a very cumbersome or a very daunting task.

Removing the “System requirement not met” Watermark from your PC

Removing the watermark from your PC involves tweaking a registry file of your PC. However, it is completely safe to do so and should not cause any harm to your machine.

To do so, first, head to the Start Menu on your Windows 11 PC and type Registry Editor to perform a search for it. Then, from the search results, click on the ‘Registry Editor’ tile to open it.

After that, a UAC (User Account Control) screen will appear on your screen. If you are not logged in with an admin account, enter credentials for one. Otherwise, click on the ‘Yes’ button to proceed.

Now, on the Registry Editor window, either navigate, type, or copy+paste the below-mentioned address in the address bar present in the top section of the window and press Enter on your keyboard to proceed.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\UnsupportedHardwareNotificationCache

In case you do not have a directory named ‘UnsupportedHardwareNotificationCache’ in your registry. Then, right-click on the ‘Control Panel’ directory to reveal the context menu and hover over the ‘New’ option. Next, choose the ‘New key’ option. This will create a new directory.

Now, either type or copy+paste the below-mentioned name and hit Enter on your keyboard to create the directory.

UnsupportedHardwareNotificationCache

If you have created the directory yourself, you will also need to create a DWORD file as well. To do so, click to select the director from the left section of the window. Next, on the right section, right-click to reveal the context menu and hover over the ‘New’ option, and then click on the ‘DWORD’ option to create the file.

After that, name the file SV2 and hit Enter on your keyboard to save the file with the specified name.

After that, locate and double-click on the ‘SV2’ Dword file to modify its value. This will open a separate window on your screen.

Now, on the separately opened window, locate the ‘Value’ field and enter 0 in the textbox present right beneath it. Then, click on the ‘OK’ button to confirm and close the dialog box.

Note: There could be a value present in the text box, do not hesitate to overwrite the value.