Hi everyone! Welcome to another video on Windows 11. I did a few videos before where I explained how to upgrade to Windows 11 when you have unsupported hardware. In this video I will do exactly the same. Using a different, quicker and easier method than before.
This one also has less chance of failing or causing issues after the upgrade. Just to be clear, the goal of this video is to upgrade. That means all your files and applications should be saved and be there in Windows 11 after the upgrade. Nevertheless it’s still a good idea to have a proper backup of important stuff, especially when doing things like this. I’ll probably publish a video on doing a fresh install with the new method in the next days as well.
Windows 11 requirements
The published system requirements for Windows 11 are as follows:
Processor: 1GHz or faster with two or more cores on a compatible 64-bit processor or system on a chip (SoC)
RAM: at least 4GB
Storage: at least 64GB of available storage
Security: TPM version 2.0, UEFI firmware, Secure Boot capable
Graphics card: Compatible with DirectX 12 or later, with a WDDM 2.0 driver
Display: High definition (720p) display, 9″ or greater monitor, 8-bits per color channel
I’ll put a card here in this video as soon as it’s ready. As you probably know by now, Microsoft has added some strict hardware requirements to Windows 11. TPM 2.0, secure boot and a supported CPU are required or you will not be able to install or upgrade to Windows 11. This means that a lot of people find that they are not able to update to Windows 11 even though they have recent and performant hardware.
The method I used before was to combine the Windows 10 installer with the Windows 11 installation files. The downside of using this method, although it does work fine in most cases, is that it requires downloading both Windows 10 and Windows 11 and these are quite big.
Also, since this would lead to as lightly different upgrade method, in some cases there were issues with some of the Windows components like the empty Windows security dialog or non-working downgrade option. For this video on the other hand, I’ll use a different method.
I did a video on that as well and you can find a card here in case you’re interested. This machine currently has Windows 10 Pro installed but the steps in this video will be the same for another version like Home. As you can see, the PC has an Intel Core i5 6400 which is not supported. Just to be sure, let me run the PC check utility. This Microsoft utility can check compatibility with Windows 11.
We can see here indeed that our CPU is not supported and also TPM is disabled. In case we would try to run the upgrade without any modifications we would see the following: To get around that, let’s start the process by downloading the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft’s website. Simply select the only option: Windows 11. Choose the desired language. Important here is that this has to match with the currently installed version.
If you’re not sure or run into issues later, you can use the Media Creation Tool instead. This one will automatically select the recommended language version. Next choose 64-bit. Once the ISO is downloaded, navigate to your Downloads folder and double click on the ISO file. This mounts the ISO as a drive letter in Windows, which is D: in my case, as you can see here.
Now create a new folder on the desktop. I called itWin11install but the name is not very important. Then copy all files from the mounted ISO to that folder on your desktop. The copy is complete and since all we need is on the desktop, we can now unmount the ISO by doing aright click on the drive and choose eject. If you’re low on space, you can also delete the ISO file from your downloads folder at this point.
How to update to windows 11 on unsupported hardware
Let’s open our Win 11 install folder now. To overcome the error message shown earlier and to bypass the hardware check, we simply need to delete a single file: appraiserres.dll. This is found in the \sources folder. To do so, navigate to that folder: \sourcesand find the appraiserres.dll file in it. Then delete it. That’s really all it takes to disable the hardware check in the installer. Let’s test to see if that worked now. To do so, I’ll go back to the previous folder and run setup.
exe in order to upgrade this PC’s Windows 10 to Windows 11. In the first step here, click “Change how setup downloads updates” and choose “Not right now”. Theoretically an update could bring back the deleted appraiserres DLL file, hence why it’s better to disable this. Then click next and accept the license. Here we are, ready to install.
In case you would not see the option to keep your files here, this is most likely related to a mismatch with the language version. To over come that, as mentioned earlier, you can use the Media Creation Tool and use the recommended language setting to download the ISO there. Now all that’s left is to click Install. As soon as you click that Install button, the process starts and you can go and get yourself a coffee 🙂
The whole process took around 20 to 25 minutes in my case but this obviously depends on the speed of your computer and especially SSD or hard disk. Your PC might also restart one or more times but if all goes well you should be presented with the Windows 11 login screen eventually.
Here we need to log in and after that, the setup process continues for a bit more. Seems all went fine as we get to see the Windows 11 desktop on our now upgraded system. Let’s have a look at what About this PC has to tell us. This shows us the same unsupported hardware but now on Windows 11.
Windows security is also working fine after the upgrade which is a common issue using the old method and another much asked question is related to updates.
I’ve been running Windows 11 for a while now and so far updates have been coming inexactly the same as on supported hardware. Let’s get them all installed here to show you that this s working and also to make sure our system is up to date. As you can see that seemed to go just fine. Let’s reboot to get the updates completed. Now that we are back, About this PC shows, as we would expect, that we are indeed on a newer version.
So updates are definitely working. All that’s left now is to clean up that folder which we created on the desktop. That concludes the video. Hope it can help you to upgrade your system to Windows 11 if you have unsupported hardware. Thanks a lot for watching!
I hope you enjoyed the video and if you did please give a thumbs up. Let me and other viewers know how this worked for you in the comments as well and if you’re interested in more of the same, definitely subscribe to the channel! Thanks again and hope to see you back here soon!. Read More: Winter is Coming for CentOS 8