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Want to install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware?


fygjam

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Wanna install Windows11 on old hardware that doesn't provide TPM or secure boot support.

If so then read on.

I got this from YouTube, just save you having to watch the video.

Usual caveats.

This is for shits and giggles.
Take a backup of anything that's important.

Ever since W11 was released with its enhanced hardware requirements there have been ways for installing on unsupported hardware. Some are a bit of a pain.

The following will update a running system to W11 without having to modify the registry during the upgrade or creating a special ISO image.

Open a browser and go to https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11

Navigate down to Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices

Click on the Select Download dropdown. There is only one option.

Select Windows 11 (multi-edition ISO for x64 devices)

Select your product language. Must match the language of the current system you are running on, probably English (United States)

Click on Confirm

It will provide a button to click on to start the download.

It's a fairly meaty download. 6.2GB for the W11 23H2 version which just dropped yesterday.

Now, as you probably are aware, an ISO file is just a contained file full of other files and we want to extract all of these files to a folder. Right clicking on the ISO file just downloaded may give the option to mount the ISO file in a virtual CD drive. Some of the ZIP utilities can open ISO files, I prefer 7-ZIP.

Create a new folder on the 😄 drive, eg. W11

Extract all the files from the ISO file to the new folder (this may take some time, there's a boatload of files).

If all went well you should have the following files and folders in the new folder.

image.png
Open a command prompt (CMD)with Administrator privileges (right click and run as Administrator).

Navigate to the new folder where you extracted the files from the ISO file to.eg. cd C:\W11

Enter the following command

setup.exe /product server

Although various outputs may say "Installing Windows server" it will install Windows 11 Pro.

Follow the bouncing ball. At one point it will ask

Preserve all settings and apps
Preserve only personal files
Preserve nothing

Make your choice.

It will grind away and eventually boot into you new Windows 11 system.

You will probably need  a fair amount of free disk space, maybe 50GB.

When it has finished there will be another folder Windows.old

See Settings->Storage on how to clean up from the install.

Enjoy

 

 

The short version

Download ISO file

Extract contents

Kick off install

Answer 1 question

Enjoy W11

 

Edited by fygjam
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I hate change!

If one is happy with Windows 10, assuming it is doing everything one wishes it to do, why move to Windows 11?

The laptop I am currently using came with Windows 10.

I absolutely hated it and followed a tutorial which made Windows 10 in appearance look like Windows 8. At least I think it was 8 so I was happy once again. 🤣

Edited by Jambo
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6 hours ago, Jambo said:

I hate change!

If one is happy with Windows 10, assuming it is doing everything one wishes it to do, why move to Windows 11?

The laptop I am currently using came with Windows 10.

I absolutely hated it and followed a tutorial which made Windows 10 in appearance look like Windows 8. At least I think it was 8 so I was happy once again. 🤣

As I've posted elsewhere, I regret installing Win 11 on my new laptop. Win 10 was much more stable than 11 handling all the external devices I have connected. At some point I intend on wiping my laptop and going back to Win 10.

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1 minute ago, forcebwithu said:

As I've posted elsewhere, I regret installing Win 11 on my new laptop. Win 10 was much more stable than 11 handling all the external devices I have connected. At some point I intend on wiping my laptop and going back to Win 10.

As far as I am concerned, I am going to keep Microsoft to its promise that Windows 10 is the last version. If/when it goes out of support, I'll switch to Linux. I am already running a second laptop on Linux Mint and as things look now, I'll probably switch to Linux Mint Debian Edition. There are a couple of games I like to play which don't work properly under Linux, but for those I can run a VM without internet access.

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1 hour ago, forcebwithu said:

As I've posted elsewhere, I regret installing Win 11 on my new laptop. Win 10 was much more stable than 11 handling all the external devices I have connected. At some point I intend on wiping my laptop and going back to Win 10.

A problem that may occur. Once a version of Windows becomes the "official" version hardware manufactures stop making or upgrading the drivers for the previous versions.

I had problems back in the XP/W7 days. An HP laptop which was sold with W7 but I was trying to install XP. Just couldn't get it to run with any stability.

 

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15 minutes ago, fygjam said:

A problem that may occur. Once a version of Windows becomes the "official" version hardware manufactures stop making or upgrading the drivers for the previous versions.

I had problems back in the XP/W7 days. An HP laptop which was sold with W7 but I was trying to install XP. Just couldn't get it to run with any stability.

My current setup was humming along nicely on Win 10 for about three years, which is when I typically upgrade to a new laptop. So last May I did just that and went with Win 11 on the new laptop. As I run everything through a Startech docking station, the only thing that changed was the laptop and OS version. And that's when the headaches began.

I thought it might have been a bad install of the OS, so within the first month I wiped the drive and did a fresh install. The headaches continued, which I believe are related to power saving features cooked into 11. That causes my external drives to power down if not used, and when I do open an application, or even File Explorer that has quick access links to folders on those drives it can take upwards of half a minute of waiting for the app to respond. A right PITA for someone like me with ADHD. :default_biggrin:

There is a Device Manager setting under Power Management for the various USB drives that if unchecked won't allow the computer to turn off the device. But from what I've seen it has no effect.

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  • 4 months later...

I finally had enough of Windows 11 and bought a new laptop which I've downgraded to Windows 10.

Moving my apps over to the new laptop has gone smoothly and I'm quite pleased how fast everything is running, and how fast reboots are compared to Win 11. Hopefully Microsoft does better on their next OS version.

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I got a new laptop when I was back in the UK and it came with Windows 11.  I tweaked a few settings to make it look more familiar but (fingers crossed) it seems to be running fine.  And exceptionally fast to boot compared to my old system.

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I look after my mates PC for him and he keeps mentioning he can upgrade to 11.

My last words to him were that if he upgraded whilst I am away, he can find someone else to fix his problems.  Lol

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 4/3/2024 at 12:29 PM, forcebwithu said:

I finally had enough of Windows 11 and bought a new laptop which I've downgraded to Windows 10.

Moving my apps over to the new laptop has gone smoothly and I'm quite pleased how fast everything is running, and how fast reboots are compared to Win 11. Hopefully Microsoft does better on their next OS version.

One month on and Win 10 is performing brilliantly.

One thing I had forgotten about that was lost in Win 11 was the ability to drag maximised windows across multiple monitors. I just recently rediscovered and remembered that feature is baked into Win 10.

Working with a triple monitor setup I'm often times moving windows around. It was annoying when Win 11 was installed to find out I had to first "Restore Down" a maximized window before I could drag it across to another monitor. Once placed on the other monitor I would then have to click to maximise it again.

It was a small annoyance, but having to do that multiple times a day became a PITA. Can't imagine why the programmers of Win 11 removed that feature.

Anyway, happy days again with Win 10.

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10 hours ago, forcebwithu said:

One month on and Win 10 is performing brilliantly.

One thing I had forgotten about that was lost in Win 11 was the ability to drag maximised windows across multiple monitors. I just recently rediscovered and remembered that feature is baked into Win 10.

Working with a triple monitor setup I'm often times moving windows around. It was annoying when Win 11 was installed to find out I had to first "Restore Down" a maximized window before I could drag it across to another monitor. Once placed on the other monitor I would then have to click to maximise it again.

It was a small annoyance, but having to do that multiple times a day became a PITA. Can't imagine why the programmers of Win 11 removed that feature.

Anyway, happy days again with Win 10.

I don't agree or maybe I don't undersand you.

I am running a 3 monitor win 11 system and I can drag z full screen from one monitor to another, however, when it goes to the other screen is does not go full size so I have to hit the full size button.

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12 hours ago, Mrmango said:

I don't agree or maybe I don't undersand you.

I am running a 3 monitor win 11 system and I can drag z full screen from one monitor to another, however, when it goes to the other screen is does not go full size so I have to hit the full size button.

That wasn't the case for me when I had Win 11 installed. Maybe it was a setting I missed somewhere, or maybe it was the hardware I'm using. Two of the monitors are connected via a StarTech Thunderbolt hub, the third is plugged directly into my laptop.

And how 'bout that. After I wrote the above I decided to ask Mr. Google again if there were others experiencing the same problem. Right away found the following post. Turns out you need to have Snap turned on, which I had turned off as I hated the feature.

 

image.png

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/cannot-drag-a-maximized-window/8c40e69e-235f-4d57-9a8b-79a1679b3f27

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My sistem is a 3 4K monitor ,16GB memory and the following video bord.

VisionTek Radeon RX 550 4GB GDDR5 4K Monitor Graphics Card, 4X HDMI Outputs, Radeon Freesync 2, PCI Express 3.0, DirectX 12, Bus-Powered - 901459

It seems to work fine for me.

 

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