If you’ve tried downloading a Windows 11 Insider Preview ISO lately and hit a frustrating wall, you’re not alone, and Pete Batard, the developer behind Rufus, thinks he knows exactly who’s to blame.
Around February 11, 2026, users started reporting that downloads for the Windows 11 Canary channel build 28020.1611 and the Windows Server preview build 29531 were flat-out failing.
The culprit? An IP block message paired with error code 715-123130 that reads something along the lines of “some users, entities and locations are banned from using this service.” And no, these users weren’t running VPNs or shady anonymizers. One of them even reported being on Google Fiber, which is about as clean a connection as it gets.
Rufus gets hit too
Rufus, the beloved free tool that millions of users rely on to create bootable USB drives, also started experiencing the same download failures through its built-in Fido script, a small PowerShell helper that automates the process of fetching Windows ISOs directly from Microsoft’s servers.
Batard didn’t hold back. In a GitHub thread discussing the issue, he stated that Microsoft may have deliberately targeted the open-source tool, writing that he was “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.”
He acknowledged that since Rufus is open source, detecting the script isn’t technically that difficult, but doing so does require intentional effort from Microsoft’s side.
The prevailing theory floating around the community is that Microsoft wants to steer users toward its own official Media Creation Tool (MCT), which the company has been updating monthly. It’s a move that would make total sense from a corporate control standpoint, even if it feels like a gut punch to the power-user community.
This isn’t the first rodeo
Here’s the thing, this isn’t even new territory. This is reportedly the third time Microsoft has blocked the tool, following similar incidents in August 2022 and other bypass method restrictions.
Each time, the Rufus team eventually adapted and got things working again. The open-source nature of the project has historically been both its strength and its vulnerability in this ongoing cat-and-mouse game with Microsoft.
Despite no direct evidence that Microsoft is the culprit, the developer noted that breaking the script requires active involvement, which makes it pretty hard to chalk this up to a simple server hiccup.
As of now, Microsoft hasn’t made any official statement confirming or denying the block. The issue has been submitted to the official Feedback Hub, and the community is watching closely to see whether this is a deliberate policy shift or just a backend change that got a little too aggressive.
In the meantime, Windows 11 ISOs are still available through manual downloads on Microsoft’s official website, and Rufus still works perfectly fine if you supply the ISO file yourself. It’s just lost that handy one-click download convenience that made it so popular.
So, what do you think, is Microsoft right to push users toward the official MCT, or is this just the tech giant flexing its platform control muscles? Drop your take below, we’d love to hear it!