Quick Tip - Workaround for unsupported processor error in Windows 11 for Arm on VMware Fusion

This morning I came across an intriguing post on the VMware Reddit channel where a user had ran into an issue while attempting to upgrade their Windows 11 on Arm VM, running VMware Fusion on an Apple Silicon system. The error message stated that the CPU processor is not currently supported for Windows as you can see from the screenshot below:

After sharing the thread internally, I immediately got an answer back from one of the VMware Fusion Engineers and this issue looks to have also recently impacted UTM and luckily, there was an easy solution using the following Windows registry hack:

• Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsSelfHost\Applicability : BranchName -> CanaryChannel
• Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsSelfHost\UI\Selection : UIBranch -> CanaryChannel

After applying the registry tweak, the VMware Fusion Engineer confirmed Windows Update was now able to successfully start as shared with their screenshot below.