Anyone tried installing Windows 11 on PC not meeting minimum system requirements?

[PeterCPC]

My desktop will not update to Windows 11 allegedly because of the CPU.

I have a 2.70 Gh Intel Core i5-6400 multi core (4) and 32G RAM which, to me, seems more than adequate for W11 but the OS will not update to Windows 11 normally.

I was wondering about altering the register to allow the update BUT is this a good idea? What on-going issues am I likely to get and is it worth it anyway?

[EarthLife]

I don't know, but my laptop has always been incompatible with Windows 11 (it's always told me so anyway). but a few days ago MS was giving me the chance to update Windows 10 pro on my Dell E6540 laptop to Windows 11 pro, I turned the update down (it showed up in the windows update option), it now says my laptop is not compatible again (no changes made at all) - not sure what that's about.

[Cornelius Varley]

22 minutes ago, EarthLife said:

I don't know, but my laptop has always been incompatible with Windows 11 (it's always told me so anyway). but a few days ago MS was giving me the chance to update Windows 10 pro on my Dell E6540 laptop to Windows 11 pro, I turned the update down (it showed up in the windows update option), it now says my laptop is not compatible again (no changes made at all) - not sure what that's about.

Apparently this was an accident and the option has been removed.

Typing this on an old Lenovo X220 which shouldn't support win 11 (running win 11). Also installed on a Dell laptop that only just doesn't support 11.

To install windows 11:

• Download the windows 11 ISO and a copy of a programme called rufus, you will also need a memory stick of at least 8gb compacity. 
• Run rufus and direct the programme to where the ISO file resides.
• Rufus will give options on how to install ie ignore CPU and TPM requirements that a regular install would check first and stop win 11 from installing and also what to keep (existing files and programmes)
• Start the installation and go away for five hours.

If everything goes OK you should end up with a computer running win 11. If you don't like it you have about ten days to return to the old OS.

 

Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way

 

[StevieDvd]

There are a few changes going on that are affecting the compatability fails/passes.

The TPM 2 security chip, that Win 11 looks, for can now be mitigated by a bios firmware update on 'some' systems.  There is also talk of MS reviewing the cpu coverage too, but the longer this goes on the less likely the oldest cpu they support now will be changed.

I have had Win 11 as a previewer for a long while, it was only towards the approach of the official release thet it then stopped allowing me to update as I had an old cpu and no TPM chip.  I have updated my main PC anyway and made sure the new system was fully Win 11 friendly.

As I understand it the TPM allows Windows to reduce the possibility of Ransomware type attacks affecting your system. The CPU changes are more for options like the Android sub-system support (not sure what other options it was the Android part that I came across.

I have a Win 11 Developer Preview running on my rugged laptop and until recently it still allowed me updates even though that had an older TPM chip and processor.  Last update failed and I had to do the registry changes to keep it updating. See here for options to change the registy for updates/upgrades, note there is a MS supported change for some systems.

Is it worth it? I think so the system seems faster and more secure and oncle you get used to the style changes you can use the new options like running the Asiair app on your PC in Android mode.

 

 

Edited February 28, 2023 by StevieDvd
Added link

[Mr Spock]

With mine I had to make changes in the BIOS to enable secure boot and TPM. I can't remember the process but it worked.

[Cosmic Geoff]

Why do you want to install Windows 11? Some reviewers say it isn't that great.  At least two of my machines will not upgrade to Windows 11 (reported incompatible), and I don't care.

[PeterCPC]

12 minutes ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

Why do you want to install Windows 11? Some reviewers say it isn't that great.  At least two of my machines will not upgrade to Windows 11 (reported incompatible), and I don't care.

Because W10 will come to an end at some point.

[Cornelius Varley]

44 minutes ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

Why do you want to install Windows 11? Some reviewers say it isn't that great.  At least two of my machines will not upgrade to Windows 11 (reported incompatible), and I don't care.

Microsoft will be withdrawing support for win 10 towards the end of next year. I guess that MS will expect any computer that doesn't support win 11 (by their standards) will be thrown away and replaced with a new one. My X220 (this one I am typing on) has a build date of Sept 2011 and is supposedly incompatible. I don't see any drop off in performance (in it's day it was a high-end business laptop, the type the CEO would play solitaire on) and still going strong.

[Gasman]

This looks easier with a few different options!. Haven’t tried it myself but will do tomorrow.

Steve

[Cornelius Varley]

13 hours ago, Gasman said:

This looks easier with a few different options!. Haven’t tried it myself but will do tomorrow.

Steve

Basically what I said.

[vlaiv]

I've been running Windows 11 on my main (production) machine for quite some time and I can't complain.

I got used to it fairly quickly. My previous system was Windows 7, but since motherboard died on me - I decided to upgrade whole machine, so I got compatible hardware for W11 and installed that.

It's been stable and worked well ever since.

As for older hardware after W10 support ends - well, there will be increase of Linux based machines, I suppose. Why throw away hardware that works if it can be converted to something else with either Linux server or Linux desktop distro.

[RT65CB-SWL]

On 28/02/2023 at 11:58, PeterCPC said:

Because W10 will come to an end at some point.

Mine has! bit-locker enabled and now I am locked out. Entered the recovery key from MS and says: "The recovery key entered is not valid." or something similar. It was fine until the last update I installed the night before... 

Fresh re-install of W10PRO me thinks. 

Edited March 1, 2023 by Philip R

[Gasman]

So I did the Rufus thing today and all went fine on my oldish 7th gen i5 laptop with 8gig ram.

I chose the clean install option rather than the update and all seems to be running fine ATM maybe a little faster than my old Win 10 install which to be honest did have quite a lot of crap installed. One thing I did note while on the MS site is that non supported PC's running Win 11 may not get future updates but Win 10 updates will stop before long anyway so will have to see if and when they are available??.

Just pondering trying it with my i7 desktop but everything running ok on that so might wait for now!.

Steve

[PeterCPC]

I hit a snag with this. I tried to download the ISO file but there wasn't an option for English UK only English US or International. When I came to run the exe file to instal it said that, as the language was different, my apps would be deleted so I cancelled.

How do I find an ISO file with English UK as the language?

[Oddsocks]

40 minutes ago, PeterCPC said:

How do I find an ISO file with English UK as the language?

Hi Peter.

AFAIK there have never been UK English only Windows ISO’s, when I have used Windows ISO’s in the past for repairs or new install  I’ve always used the US English option and then used the language and other locale options in Windows after it is installed to set up specific UK keyboard, date/time, number format etc.

If you didn’t select US English option then maybe that’s why you were warned about the apps being deleted?

William.

[Oddsocks]

On 28/02/2023 at 11:58, PeterCPC said:

Because W10 will come to an end at some point.

Peter.

Just as a FYI for anyone else reading this thread, Windows 10 support is officially slated to end in Oct 2025:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-home-and-pro

One major drawback with the Rufus method for upgrading Windows 10 to Windows 11 on unsupported hardware is that it is likely you will need to repeat this process in the autumn of every year in order to install the latest "Feature" release of Windows 11, and, it is possible that Microsoft will move to block this method of bypassing their compatibility checks at some point.

William.

[PeterCPC]

Well nothing seems to work now. Rufus shows this:

Nothing happens whatever I click on.

[Cornelius Varley]

How to install using rufus (1st option in the video)

I used rufus on one laptop and the 3rd option on another - both worked. Editing the registry didn't work for me.

[Oddsocks]

Peter.

Rufus won't see the thumb drive once it has been used to create the boot media.

Start with the Windows Disk Management tool , find the thumb drive in the list of disks and delete both partitions on that drive, then create a new "simple" partition on the drive using the full disk capacity available (IOW, make no changes to the default size allocation) and format the drive "FAT32".

Exit Windows Disk manager and start Rufus, it should now see the thumb drive again and allow you to continue.

HTH

[PeterCPC]

I give up! It all went ok until I tried to run the exe to instal - the option to keep my settings and apps was not available. I had used US english version as suggested.

[Oddsocks]

34 minutes ago, PeterCPC said:

I give up! It all went ok until I tried to run the exe to instal - the option to keep my settings and apps was not available. I had used US english version as suggested.

It sounds as though you missed a step, from memory, last time I used Rufus and after you press the Start button there should have been a small pop-up screen with a list of options to build the boot media, one of those options was "keep user files and settings", that check box option must be selected otherwise when you build the boot media you create an installer that doesn't offer you the chance to keep your files and settings, only carry out a clean install.

I had a quick scan through the video that Cornelius liked to but I don't see that step anywhere in the video, maybe the latest build of Rufus has added that final step and it was not there when the video was recorded.

Try one last time, reformat the thumb drive as before and pay careful attention to any pop-up screens that appear after you press the Start button in Rufus, if you don't see a pop-up message with the list of options after pressing the Start button for the first time try moving the Rufus API window around, it could be that the pop-up message is hiding behind the main window.

If Rufus starts to build the boot media without asking you whether you want to "keep user files and settings" then I don't have any other ideas as this is the way it worked last time I used Rufus.

[PeterCPC]

Tried again but no option coming up. The issue is still language.

[malc-c]

I heard a rumour that some law suit might get filed against Microsoft as Windows 10 was marketed as being the last OS Microsoft was going to release and that it would just get annual revisions rather then the normal windows 7, 8 10 etc.  So people purchased machines to meet it's specification on the understanding that new hardware would not be required, especially as things like core count and such means that there was less need to.  Now how true this lawsuit action is I can't say, but its grounding is understandable.  My main daily runner is a first gen Ryzen 1500x (4 core 8 threads) processor running at 3 ghz.  It has 16GB of DDR4  Corsair Vengeance ram, and a Samsung 960 Eco Nvmen hard drive, and I run 2 x 24" BenQ monitors from a Gigabyte Radeon RX550 GPU.  All of this was current "state of the art" in 2017 when the machine was built... yet it failed the hardware requirements for windows 11.  Now if an OS needs higher spec than what is quite a powerful machine you have to question why...  People have mentioned Malware protection and the like.... but why integrate such protection when most users pay for this and AV protection through approved software packages.

I've seen various suggestions to circumvent the restrictions, and MS have / are opening up some options to widen the hardware windows 11 will run on, but  again if you have to use 3rd party hacks to overcome the restrictions whos to say that every time MS release a service pack or major build of win11 the PC won't stop running.

I'll stick with windows 10, even if it stops being supported by MS.  My Eset software protects me from iffy websites and strips dodgy attachments from emails  and hasn't let me down (yet).  

[EarthLife]

Yes MS will certainly overcome the ability to install win11 on PC's that are just a couple years old at some point (if you allow win11 updates), so becareful about trusting the current work arounds. Just make sure you do a full drive image backup (I use clonezilla on a USB stick) before hand so that you can go back to it when the time comes.

Everyone now knows the big tech companies can continue to do whatever they want without restriction in this world, fortunately that will come to an end at some point in the furture, just not yet

Being made to simply throw away really nice hardware is insane to say the least. My laptop is a Dell i7 3GHz with 16GB ram and 500GB SSD etc, yet MS are saying it's no longer a valid PC !  .. this is terrible state of affairs to say the least. Any OS can be made safe by coding in suitable protection. and most all motherboards can have their firmware (bios) updated if the manufactures really wanted to do so (but would have a drastic effect on their profits). CPU's can be swapped out etc etc.

It's really no wonder the human race is heading for a fall

Edited March 2, 2023 by EarthLife

[Gasman]

Update !

Sorry Peter had second thoughts about Win 11 now, after all the obligatory updates my laptop has now slowed down to a snails pace making it almost unusable. Win 11 does look quite snazzy and with the right resources it should fly but maybe a good reason why some hardware is not supported.

Steve