HomeWinBuzzer NewsMicrosoft Halts Windows 11 Upgrade for Users with Non-ASCII Registry Characters

Microsoft Halts Windows 11 Upgrade for Users with Non-ASCII Registry Characters

Windows 11 currently has a problem recognizing apps with non-ASCII characters, causing the platform to potentially crash.

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says it is aware of a new issue with for some users installing the recently launched platform. Specifically, it seems like when there are non-ASCII characters in the registry, Windows 11 gets confused.

That means if an app uses non-ASCII characters in the subkeys or registry, Windows 11 has compatibility problems with the app. This then leads to the apps crashing or not opening at all. Some users are reporting Windows will misbehave and sometimes even throws up a blue screen error.

When there is a problem in the registry keys, it may not be possible to repair them under current conditions.

If you are unfamiliar with non-ASCII keys, it is said like ask-ee and is short for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It is based on the 128 characters that make up the English alphabet and related characters (A-Z, punctuation, spaces, 0-9, and control codes) on a standard keyboard.

Each character is assigned a number between 0 to 127 that shows what they are when data is transferred. Non-ASCII characters are any letters, symbols, numbers, that are not within in the 128 characters of ASCII. A notable example is the Chinese or Japanese characters.

Upgrade on Hold

It is these that Windows 11 is currently having compatibility issues with. Microsoft acknowledges the problem and is investigating. An update will come to solve the issue, but in the meantime users with registries with non-ASCII characters will not get Windows 11 for now. The company says users should avoid manually upgrading.

Tip of the day: To prevent attackers from capturing your password, Secure Sign-in asks the user to perform a physical action that activates the sign-in screen. In some cases, this is a dedicated “” button, but the most common case in is the Ctrl+Alt Del hotkey. In our tutorial, we show you how to activate this feature.

Last Updated on February 14, 2022 8:19 pm CET by Markus Kasanmascheff

Luke Jones
Luke Jones
Luke has been writing about all things tech for more than five years. He is following Microsoft closely to bring you the latest news about Windows, Office, Azure, Skype, HoloLens and all the rest of their products.

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