4 GB RAM seems impossibly tight as well. I'm not sure if 4 core and 4 GB was ever a common or representative setup for PCs; perhaps 2 core and 4 GB in the Vista timeframe...
I'm not sure why you're bringing cores into this. And 2 cores is still fine for a lot of purposes. And there were lots of 2 core machines with far less than 4GB. Even 1GB was "double" the minimum required for Vista, because OEMs pressured microsoft into lowering the vista requirements down to garbage levels.
> That is not how most end user installations are configured (aka, not as a virtual machine).
Though not the default, Microsoft is moving more and more towards hypervisor-based security, for both kernel stuff and for browser stuff. Right now you need to enable it, but I wouldn't be surprised if Windows 11 relies on it. The leaked installer already relies on having a TPM, after all.
Out of all virtual machine technologies, Hyper-V is probably the one that will give Microsoft the best chances at being near-metal without passing through hardware. Other hypervisors shouldn't pose a problem, but they're not under Microsoft's control.
If you have the time and hardware, you should feel free to test this on actual hardware instead; I doubt the results will differ much, though.
> That is not how most end user installations are configured (aka, not as a virtual machine).
IIRC if virtualization is turned on in BIOS, the host Windows itself effectively runs as a hypervisor-backed machine. I still think the tests aren't really representative, though.
I used Hyper-V as the hypervisor of choice
That is not how most end user installations are configured (aka, not as a virtual machine).
32GB fixed disk for each build.
That is much much less than the typical Windows 10 hardware.
the fast boot feature has been disabled for the purposes of this measurement.
That is not the default and not reflective of most installations.