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In a fresh development, next month’s Patch Tuesday falls on October 13th, and with that patch, Microsoft will be enabling “Memory Integrity” on all Windows 11 systems that are still receiving updates, according to this Windows IT Pro blog post.
According to the latest update, starting October 13th, 2026, all supported Windows 11 PCs will enable Memory Integrity by default. While Memory Integrity is primarily intended as a security capability, gamers may find it a hindrance. Memory Integrity (also known as Hypervisor-Protected Code Integrity, or HVCI) has been around for some time, but it hasn’t been enabled yet on many PCs.
As part of the ongoing story, well, Memory Integrity ensures that only verified kernel-mode code is loaded on the PC, blocking unsigned rootkits and raising the barrier to driver-based kernel attacks. The goal is for Windows 11 to be better protected against malware attacks. What does it actually do?
According to the latest update, according to this support page, Memory Integrity requires the following devices:. Before Windows enables this capability, it will check eligible computers and verify whether the machine is ready for it.
In a fresh development, tom’s Infrastructure measured years ago that HVCI combined with VBS (Virtualization-Based Security) causes platform releases to run up to 15 percent slower. VBS is also enabled as part of this patch, providing additional security functions. However, this capability has a major drawback: Memory Integrity can apparently slow down platform releases.
According to the latest update, according to Tom’s Infrastructure, Microsoft confirmed in 2022 that “Memory Integrity and Virtual Machine Stack could affect tech industry performance on some Windows 11 configurations, and advised gamers prioritizing performance that they could temporarily disable these protections while playing, warning that doing so reduces security.”.
The report highlights that tom’s Infrastructure continued, saying that Microsoft’s guidance for gamers recommended “temporarily disabling Memory Integrity and VMP where they interfere with tech industry performance.”. Tech industry performance losses are most likely to be noticeable on computers with older devices.
In a fresh development, this article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and localized from German.
As part of the ongoing story, he has been writing on almost all IT topics for around 25 years, covering everything from news to reviews and buying guides. Hans-Christian Dirscherl began his IT life with Autoexec.bat and config.sys, Turbo-Pascal and C, Sinix and Wordperfect.