Last week, several users noticed an unsettling change in the latest Windows Insider preview builds: they were unable to access Windows 11 ISO downloads. The issue persists across the Windows 11 Canary build 28020.1611 and the Server preview build 29531.
The problem was flagged by “ChronoVore” on Microsoft’s official forum, who reported being unable to download the latest Windows 11 ISO. They further noted that the error message suggested their IP address was being blocked.
I’m on Google fiber and can’t download the newest ISO. I get a msg that says some block of IPs is being blocked because they are not who they say they are. Likewise, I have no anonymizer running and my ip is my own on google fiber. … error msg; message code 715-123130 and b64dd3c8-ed16-4d46-87ac-a871691f1c41.
ChronoVore
Pete Batard, Rufus’ developer, believes that the issue blocking the latest Windows 11 ISO downloads might be an intentional change from Microsoft designed to compel users to download Windows ISO files from the official MCT utility.
“Nah, they are detecting the script (which quite frankly is not that hard to do since it’s Open Source), though it does require active intentional involvement from Microsoft to break the script downloads,” added Batard in a GitHub thread on a discussion about Microsoft blocking downloads from Fido. “In short, I’m pretty sure Microsoft paid one of their employees to figure out a way to break the Fido downloads explicitly, and then implemented that on their servers.”
It’ll be interesting to see if the move is intentional or just a bug impacting the build update. In the interim, the issue has been submitted to the official Feedback Hub.
Have you been affected by the issue? Let me know in the comments.
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