Microsoft Appears To Be Blocking Home windows 11 And 10 Downloads In Russia

Shortly after Russia started its invasion of Ukraine, many tech corporations introduced that they might be suspending gross sales to the nation. Among the many corporations that made these bulletins have been AMD, Intel, TSMC, NVIDIA, Apple, Cisco, Oracle, IBM, PlayStation, Nintendo, and Microsoft. Since this preliminary flurry of bulletins, numerous corporations have continued to impose stricter limitations on Russia. Whereas unannounced, plainly Microsoft additional tightened its restrictions on Russia over the weekend.

We have been in a position to verify this discovering by connecting to a VPN server situated in Russia and trying to obtain Home windows from the Microsoft web site. Not solely have been we unable to obtain Home windows 10 and 11 installers, we have been additionally unable to Home windows 8.1, Home windows 10 IoT Core, and the Media Characteristic Pack for Home windows 10. As soon as we switched again to a US-based IP handle, we had no drawback downloading these installers, even whereas utilizing the Russian-language model of the web site.

Whereas linked to the Russian VPN server, clicking the obtain button for the Home windows 11 Set up Assistant redirected us to a obtain web page that displayed a 404 error. We have been in a position to obtain the Home windows 11 set up media device, however, the device throws an error with the code 0x80072F8F-0x20000 when run. The error dialog says in Russian, “For some unknown cause, this device didn’t run in your laptop.” All different obtain choices displayed the error proven within the picture above.

Microsoft has but to make a press release confirming that this conduct is intentional, so we’ll need to see whether or not the corporate is purposefully blocking Russian customers from downloading Home windows set up instruments. Paradoxically, whereas plainly Russians can connect with a VPN server situated outdoors of Russia to get round this restriction, the federal government has banned the usage of fifteen totally different VPN companies in an effort to stop residents from connecting to the web with out going via the Federal Authorities Data System.