This is a great thread with some really simple fixes to work around Microsoft's hurdles. My secondary desktop and laptop PCs supposedly not supported in Windows 11 work fine but I'm cautious about upgrading my main 11 year old desktop PC as shown in 'My Computer' - motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H. My main concern is that at some point Microsoft breaks something since this PC does not have a TPM.
I read that if you put W11 on an unqualified PC you won't get any updates. If this is true for all updates are just feature updates?
Jim
Windows 11 on an unsupported device gets all the cumulative updates, ,NET updates, security intelligence updates, etc. That has been the case so far, at least.
The only thing it won't see in Windows Update is the next Feature Update being offered. For that you would have to download the ISO and perform an in-place upgrade, using a workaround to get it to install on an unsupported device.
Thanks - I didn't know about the lack of a feature update. My main concern is that Microsoft breaks something in a few years which prevents non-compliant PCs from updating (no TPM in my case). In that event recovery to my last archived Windows 10 installation is of limited use since it will be out of date with my system configuration. In that event, can you run setup.exe from a Windows 10 ISO file to revert from Windows 11 to Windows 10?
Steve,
I have not seen anybody in ElevenForum report having tried that. I have not searched there for your query nor have I asked such a question there.
The nearest comparison would seem to be a Windows 10 computer running a Repair install using the ISO of an earlier Windows 10 Version.
In that case, it would work but there would be no option to keep installed applications and user files.
So I'd guess that would be the result of trying a Windows 10 ISO in Windows 11 {which is, after all, just Windows 10 SP2).
But it might just refuse to run at all or it might produce catastrophic results.
If I ever found myself in that situation I'd restore my last Windows 10 system image and then update from there to account for 'configuration changes' instead.
All the best,
Denis
When a new feature update is available Windows Update checks your PC for compatibility. If it fails then you won't be offered the feature update. Check results can be seen in the registry.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\TargetVersionUpgradeExperienceIndicators\
There is a key for each version tested. For Windows 10 they are the version name (eg. 21H2), for Windows 11 they are CO21H2 or NI22H2 (Cobalt and Nickel are their W11 version code names). The RedReason value will list any incompatibilities, or say 'none'. Only if it says none will you see the feature update offered in Windows Update.
No, like trying to do an in-place upgrade of W10 with an ISO of an older version you will not be allowed to keep your installed apps or files.... can you run setup.exe from a Windows 10 ISO file to revert from Windows 11 to Windows 10?
Last edited by Bree; 06 Feb 2023 at 07:05.
I read that you can install on unsupported PC's but eventually a feature update will brick it and you'd need to reinstall the OS if that happens. So for that reason I'm not upgrading. (Unsupported processor is the only block on my machine).
Installing Windows 11 on a test machine that doesn't meet requirements is fine but expect it to break. Otherwise just don't apply feature upgrades especially without a full backup.
Or according to the other posts above feature upgrades won't be offered anyway.
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