Microsoft banned Russians from downloading Windows 10 and Windows 11. How to get around the restriction

The Microsoft website has a restriction on downloading Windows 11 and Windows 11 from Russian IPs. Other programs are also not available to Russians. Microsoft does not comment on the situation. When connecting to the portal from the IP address of another country, there are no problems with downloading.

Russians have no entry

Russians have lost the opportunity to download distributions of Windows 10 and Windows 11 from the Microsoft website. The CNews editors were convinced of this on June 18, 2022.

Microsoft supported anti-Russian sanctions in early March 2022 and briefly suspended its business in Russia. In June 2022, she decided to reduce her presence in the country.

Also, at the time of publication of the material, users with a Russian IP could not download the utilities of the assistant for installing operating systems. In addition, the Media Creation Tool is no longer available to them.

For example, when you try to download a Windows 11 image, the Microsoft Portal displays the message “There was a problem with your request.” If you need to download the Media Creation Tool, then the site will “swear” that the file is missing on the server and will return a 404 error (404 – File or Directory not found).

Checking the editors of CNews showed that this does not depend on the provider. The problem manifested itself on the Beeline wired Internet, as well as when connecting via the mobile Internet of MTS, Beeline and Tele2.

Microsoft Corporation at the time of publication of the material did not comment on what was happening. The editors of CNews sent a request to the Russian representative office of the corporation and are awaiting a response.

Recall that Windows is the most popular desktop OS in the world – as of May 2022, it occupied 75.54% of the global market against 14.98% for Apple macOS and 2.45% for all Linux distributions (StatCounter statistics). The most popular version of Windows in May 2022 was Windows 10 (71.82%). It was followed by Windows 7 (13.03%), and Windows 11 closed the top three with 10.08%.

elementary solution

The function of downloading Windows 10 and Windows 11 distributions, as well as other Microsoft software from the corporation’s website, was functioning properly as of June 18, 2022. To gain access to the necessary content, it is enough to get rid of the Russian IP address.

The CNews editors made sure that when you connect to the Microsoft website, for example, under a Polish IP, everything immediately starts working. True, for this it is also necessary to change the language of the site to any other, except for Russian. If you select it, the IP address spoofing maneuver may not bring the desired result.

Russians often download Microsoft OS from resources that are not related to the corporation

From this it follows that the problem, with a very high degree of probability, affects mainly users from Russia. According to the DTF portal, similar complaints are also received from Kazakhstan, but there is no talk of a massive problem in this country yet. What is the reason for this selectivity of the failure, and whether Microsoft is going to fix it, remains unknown.

The experience of American “colleagues”

The closure of the site or some of its sections from the Russians became a common practice after February 24, 2022. For example, the online publication The Next Web did this – without tools to bypass the blocking, it was impossible to get to its site from Russia on June 18, 2022.

Intel was one of the first companies to introduce such a restriction. Her website stopped opening from Russian IP addresses as early as March 25, 2022. Later, access was again granted, but in early March 2022, Intel announced the suspension of Russian business, and a month later completely left the country. At the time of publication of the material, her site was only partially opened from Russia.

IBM has followed a similar path. Having frozen all operations in Russia in the early spring of 2022, she finally fled the country in the first days of June 2022, declaring her unwillingness to do business in Russia.

The IBM site has become useless for users from Russia

As of June 18, 2022, it was not possible to connect to her site from a Russian IP address – instead of content available from other countries, a special “stub” was displayed on the screen.