• Windows Phone Area
• On February 19, 2018

Microsoft publishes the limitations of Windows on ARM

The first ARM-based laptops will be coming to the market later this year with the Snapdragon 835 chipset on-board, offering a great battery life and cellular connectivity. But just like the previous ARM attempt called ‘Windows RT’, this Windows 10 on ARM adventure should also cope with some limitations. Last week, Microsoft accidentally published (and then removed) some docs about Windows 10 on ARM, so we could learn more about what to expect from the Always-connected PCs.

• x64 Win32 app support is missing – Windows 10 on ARM will emulate only the 32-bit Win32 apps thanks to an emulation layer. It’s similar to how Microsoft emulates the x86 apps on x64 machines.
• Hyper-V is missing – you won’t be able to create virtual machines. Hyper-V won’t be supported on ARM processors.
• Some Universal Windows apps may show incorrectly – the app may scale for a phone, rather than for a PC, if the developer assumed while designing the app that all ARM devices were phones. If the app was built correctly, this wouldn’t be an issue.
• Old drivers for peripherals may not work – drivers for printers and other peripherals should be recompiled for ARM. A potential problem if you try to connect an older printer or something else.
• Games requiring DirectX 8 or older won’t work.
• Some third-party customization apps may not work – apps that customize the OS (the shell) won’t work.