Solved A costly lesson I just learned about W11 Upgrades

Birk · Jul 5, 2024

zbook said:
Run the computer for a few days.

If there are any major problems then post a V2 share link into the newest post.

Will do. As I said, all the updates completed OK. I manually deleted all the leftover Win10 stuff, rebooted, and ran a Macrium image backup after that. No problems encountered.

But as you noted - the proof is in the pudding. I'll post an update here in a few days. The PC is my wife's system, and although she doesn't run heavy duty stuff like I do (3D renderings etc.) she does use all the standard apps (Chrome, Word, Excel, etc.) pretty extensively. So a few days should tell the story.

MisterEd · Jul 5, 2024

Birk said:
Today, as if by magic, I found a Gigabyte GT1030 on my doorstep. I have no idea how it got there, but I'm pretty sure it came from Amazon. No, I never ordered a GT130 from anyone, and Amazon shows my GT710 is still on order. Regrettably the GT1030 didn't allow Win11 to install either.

Do you have GT1030 in your computer now? It is a much better card than any of the other one you talked about. In fact it is 3 times as fast as the GT710. The GT1030 came out in 2017 and is fully supported by Windows 10 & 11.

The GTX750Ti is a little bit faster than the GT1030 but is 3 years older (2014). You have to decide which one you want to use.

BTW, both Gigabyte and Nvidia have Windows 11 drivers for the GT1030. I suggest you get the driver from Nvidia since it is a lot newer.

BamaInArk · Jul 5, 2024

Some thoughts.....

Win11 does not require Secure Boot to be "On" but the motherboard has to be Secure Boot compatible. The problems with older GPUs is UEFI support. Drivers should not matter as there are no GPU drivers required for a clean install of Win11. The video out required simply uses the GPUs onboard bios to support any video output.

Birk · Jul 5, 2024

MisterEd said:
Do you have GT1030 in your computer now?

Yes - the 1030 is in the box (the PC box I mean) and seems to be working fine. The card is quite small and has a very cute heat sink and tiny fan attached to one side. As I noted, I have no idea how or why I got the card - I didn't order it and, even though I cancelled the order for the GT710 before it shipped Amazon says it will be delivered tomorrow. So I guess I'll just have to return it.

Thanks for all your info about the 1030. TBH I don't know what driver version is installed now, but I'll check and see how it compares to whatever is current. I've had so many video cards in the PC I can certainly imagine the the video driver situation is a mess internally. I should probably look for some piece of software that finds and deletes old obsolete drivers.

Birk · Jul 5, 2024

BamaInArk said:
Drivers should not matter

Yup - "should not" is the key phrase there. I tried a total of 4 different video cards in the system (it was late at night and was just trying different cards at random), and each try required 2 reboots and tweaking the BIOS each time. It seems to me that the Secure Boot requirement, whatever it actually is, is likely not well understood in general, and is certainly not well documented. The best info I found was the very brief Rufus page that essentially said "Do this to get rid of that." Fortunately for me it worked just like that.

MisterEd · Jul 5, 2024

Birk said:
Thanks for all your info about the 1030. TBH I don't know what driver version is installed now, but I'll check and see how it compares to whatever is current. I've had so many video cards in the PC I can certainly imagine the the video driver situation is a mess internally. I should probably look for some piece of software that finds and deletes old obsolete drivers.

You can see which Nvidia driver you have by running the Device manager

If you download the driver from Nvidia it also installs the program Geforce Experience. You can use it to see what driver you have and download a driver update if you want.

The Device Manager gives a different driver number than Nvidia. For example, for my GTX1060 it is:

Device Manager: 32.0.15.5612
Nvidia Driver: 556.12

If you look closely at the Device Manager it is easy to figure out what the actual Nvidia driver is.

BTW, there are 4 Gigabyte GT1030 variations.
GeForce® GT 1030 | Graphics Card - GIGABYTE Global

BamaInArk · Jul 5, 2024

Birk said:
Yup - "should not" is the key phrase there. I tried a total of 4 different video cards in the system (it was late at night and was just trying different cards at random), and each try required 2 reboots and tweaking the BIOS each time. It seems to me that the Secure Boot requirement, whatever it actually is, is likely not well understood in general, and is certainly not well documented. The best info I found was the very brief Rufus page that essentially said "Do this to get rid of that." Fortunately for me it worked just like that.

I literally just got finished installing Win11 on an AMD system using the same(or similar) GPU....GTX 1030. No problems at all. I think you're issue lies elsewhere. Either with the motherboard settings or the Win11 installer you're using.
Perhaps the motherboard TPM settings?

Birk · Jul 5, 2024

MisterEd said:
MisterEd said:

If you look closely at the Device Manager it is easy to figure out what the actual Nvidia driver is.

GAK! All this time I could never understand why the driver numbers didn't match. Now I know the (strange) secret. Thanks.

Click to expand...

Marcus Vinicus · Jul 5, 2024

For full information on the GPU in the computer GPU-Z is a good tool. It also shows if the GPU is UEFI compliant.

Birk · Jul 5, 2024

BamaInArk said:
I literally just got finished installing Win11 on an AMD system using the same(or similar) GPU....GTX 1030. No problems at all. I think you're issue lies elsewhere. Either with the motherboard settings or the Win11 installer you're using.
Perhaps the motherboard TPM settings?

Well I'm glad you didn't run into the same problems I did. Bur my sense is the reason is more about the fact that you have an AMD motherboard and I have an ASUS one. And my i5 CPU chip is the "cheap" one with no graphics support. In fact the chip is the same as the regular one, but they tweak the chip's microcode to disable the graphics. (This is what happens when you let the marketing people mess with the technical stuff/)

BamaInArk · Jul 5, 2024

Birk said:
Well I'm glad you didn't run into the same problems I did. Bur my sense is the reason is more about the fact that you have an AMD motherboard and I have an ASUS one. And my i5 CPU chip is the "cheap" one with no graphics support. In fact the chip is the same as the regular one, but they tweak the chip's microcode to disable the graphics. (This is what happens when you let the marketing people mess with the technical stuff/)

It's an ASUS board with an AMD chipset. The issue here isn't AMD vs Intel vs GPU. Something is amiss with your settings or hardware. Whether you're using a K skew CPU or not shouldn't make any difference in installation process.

FDretired · Jul 5, 2024

I upgraded 2 desktops to be compatible soon after inception of win 11

Me and my other half.

I would first choose the motherboard at Amazon. There would often
be some information below the choice "frequently bought together".

I would then choose the CPU and speak to computer assembly guy to
confirm my choice.

Once I had the components, 1)Motherboard 2) CPU and 3) memory - if necessary

I would take it to my computer guy. He would have it ready the next day with
no mistakes!

spapakons · Jul 6, 2024

Too much money, too much trouble for nothing. Why you don't just bypass compatibility check to upgrade Windows 10 to 11 without meeting all the requirements? See relevant thread.

Dirtyflash · Jul 6, 2024

spapakons said:
Too much money, too much trouble for nothing. Why you don't just bypass compatibility check to upgrade Windows 10 to 11 without meeting all the requirements? See relevant thread.

Making a mountain out of a molehill?

dacrone · Jul 6, 2024

Rufus isn’t even required either. There is a .cmd you can run and then immediately update. No reboots. Nothing. Upgrading hardware is like buying a movie whereas bypassing is like renting a movie on Amazon. Either way you’ll get to watch the movie.. just depends on how much you want to spend out of pocket. Not required, just preference.. I suppose.

spapakons · Jul 6, 2024

Dirtyflash said:
Making a mountain out of a molehill?

What do you mean? Is not that hard as it seems to bypass compatibility check. You can download the Windows 11 ISO, use Rufus to create a USB flash drive and remove the compatibility check. Then disconnect from the internet and run Setup. Keep disconnected until complete.

dacrone · Jul 6, 2024

spapakons said:
What do you mean? Is not that hard as it seems to bypass compatibility check. You can download the Windows 11 ISO, use Rufus to create a USB flash drive and remove the compatibility check. Then disconnect from the internet and run Setup. Keep disconnected until complete.

Just run the Cmd/batch then run the iso setup.

MediaCreationTool.bat/bypass11/Skip_TPM_Check_on_Dynamic_Update.cmd at main · AveYo/MediaCreationTool.bat

Universal MCT wrapper script for all Windows 10/11 versions from 1507 to 21H2! - AveYo/MediaCreationTool.bat

github.com

SIW2 · Jul 6, 2024

The CPU was one that included graphics support because I wanted to avoid a separate graphics card.

Very wise. Is it too late to return the non graphics cpu? Graphics card is a waste of money, space and electricty unless you have special requirements that need one.

spapakons · Jul 7, 2024

dacrone said:
Just run the Cmd/batch then run the iso setup.

MediaCreationTool.bat/bypass11/Skip_TPM_Check_on_Dynamic_Update.cmd at main · AveYo/MediaCreationTool.bat

Universal MCT wrapper script for all Windows 10/11 versions from 1507 to 21H2! - AveYo/MediaCreationTool.bat

github.com

Either way you must stay disconnected from the internet during the upgrade to avoid a hidden online compatibility check. I have confirmed with at least 5 unsupported systems, if you stay connected after the initial stage is about 70%-80% you will see an error message that upgrade failed. If you are disconnected from the internet Setup cannot make this hidden online compatibility check and just let the process complete and restart to continue in stage 2. Also if you are online Setup will try replacing some drivers or install updates and might result in BSOD if it doesn't install all of them properly. You can update any drivers and install updates after you have successfully upgraded to Windows 11. The same caution is true for upgrading an unsupported computer from one Windows 11 version to another (such as from 21H2 to 22H2 or 22H2 to 23H2 etc).

Birk · Jul 7, 2024

To clear up a couple of things about my particular experience:

1. I knew I'd need the official MS Win11 upgrade install ISO, so I tried to download it on my PC which has been running Win11 for a long time. The MS downloader told me I was already running the latest version of WIn11 and would not do the download. So I got it using the Win10 system I was trying to upgrade to Win11.

2. I did try using the registry tweaks in this site's Tutorial section that are supposed to remove or bypass the "compatibility check" for upgrading Win10 ==> Win11. That tweak did not work, so I had to try something else.

3. I did a fair amount of web searching and found a post that identified an Easus utility that supposedly eliminated the check. That did not work either.

4. One of the people responding to my original post here said Rufus could bypass the check. I'd not ever used Rufus in the past and was surprised at how simple and small it was. The Rufus method allowed the WIn10 ==> Win11 upgrade to complete successfully.

5. During step 4 the PC was connected to the Internet the entire time.

6. This whole scenario was caused by Amazon's inability to ship a graphics enabled Intel i5 CPU in the timeframe I needed. So I cancelled that order and replaced it with a non-graphics i5 - and saved a little $ because of that. I ran into trouble when I attempted to use any of the old VGA cards I had saved from previous PC's. There is clearly some sort of interaction between the Win11 installer and the graphics support (whatever it is) in the system being upgraded.

What happened in my case was this: after installing any of the old graphics cards and making the Bios changes required for Trusted Boot, when the system reboots the BIOS throws up a message saying (not an exact quote) "An incompatibility with VGA video has been discovered. Press F2 to correct this and then press F1 to restore default BIOS settings so you have a smooth experience." There are no options - the only way to proceed is to do what it says. So the only way I could get past this was to use the Rufus method to eliminate the so-called "compatibility" test.

7. I found several web postings that said that if I was able to bypass the Secure boot check my new Win11 system would not be able to install updates, or do other things that Win11 does. After I got Win 11 installed (I used the "update later" option for the install) I had no problem installing a sizeable bunch of Windows updates identified by Win11's Windows Update.

After going through this process it's pretty clear to me that there are lots of online postings that may or may not be correct. The only way I was able to get this upgrade completed was by persevering though a number of trial-and-error attempts until finding one that actually worked.

Solved A costly lesson I just learned about W11 Upgrades

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