How to Upgrade Win 10 to Win 11 after Motherboard Upgrade

Dru2 · Jan 10, 2022

optimxr said:
Glasskuter, Dru2 and all others, I really appreciate your patience with me and all the great in-depth advice you've given me on my upgrade. I will close this thread with a great deal more confidence as I go forward. I am not in a hurry to get Windows 11 installed as I would like to investigate all the details that are of interest to me and my needs before I make that change. Some of the tools that you have introduced me to(Macrium, GPU-Z, MBR2GPT, etc) will be very useful in my next few re-builds. So thanks again and consider this thread Closed.
Optimxr

Thanks. And good luck :)

And again, if you're going to move to Windows 11 at a later date, you might consider a clean install and start fresh. You can just do an upgrade and keep your personal settings and programs, but if your current OS is acting up anyway, a clean install provides a fresh start.

And don't overthink things - the Media Creation Tool is simple and quick. Just something to think about. Good luck :)

spapakons · Jan 11, 2022

The Media Creation Tool will only allow a fully compliant system to upgrade to Windows 11. For all of us having a non-compliant system, we have to download the Windows 11 ISO, mount it and start Setup from there. At first screen we must delete the file C:\Windows.~BT\sources\appreserres.dll to bypass compatibility check before proceeding with the upgrade.

Dru2 · Jan 11, 2022

spapakons said:
The Media Creation Tool will only allow a fully compliant system to upgrade to Windows 11.

Maybe, but the OP (optimxr) system IS "fully compliant" so no need to complicate things. For him the Media Creation Tool would work just fine. It's simple, quick, and easy. Why complicate things when there's no need to do so? :wink:

spapakons · Jan 11, 2022

I just wanted to help other readers that could have a non-compliant computer. I wasn't addressing the OP. Of course if you have a compliant computer, go by the book and use MCT. No hacking necessary. If you have a non-compliant computer it is good to know there is a workaround.

ish4d0w · Jan 11, 2022

spapakons said:
If you have a non-compliant computer it is good to know there is a workaround.

For now, there is, yes is a workaround. But I really don't recommend it for two reasons:
1. Windows 10 is still supported for 3 more years, offers almost the same features, full app compatibility, and as such, you wouldn't gain much from Windows 11 on an unsupported PC.

2. There is probably a reason why these new requirements were added, particularly TPM. Microsoft probably has plans with them in the near future. There could be an update later on which would just break Windows 11 on unsupported PCs, by simply expecting that you have TPM and compatible processor.

In the case of the original poster, his/her specs are fully supported and can update without any hacks.

Bree · Jan 11, 2022

ish4d0w said:
There could be an update later on which would just break Windows 11 on unsupported PCs

I doubt that. It's more likely that would be the point at which MS stop providing updates to unsupported devices, saying "don't say we didn't warn you...".

spapakons · Jan 11, 2022

In worst case scenario that a future update ruins my system, I would backup my latest files and then replace my Windows 11 SSD with the Windows 10 SSD returning to Windows 10. Hopefully this will not happen and it will be a new workaround/patch to address this.

ish4d0w · Jan 11, 2022

The whole situation of requiring TPM and a very recent CPU is so suspicious to me. It was when the leak was announced, and it still is for me.

They are either mad, or preparing for a significant security overhaul, that will certainly disable these workarounds.

But either way, adding such requirements just to tick off the box, without actually using them ... just doesn't make sense to me. Does it?

spapakons · Jan 11, 2022

They add these requirements for two reasons. One is to tell that Windows 11 is the most secure OS on compliant computers. The other is to discourage or prevent (they wish) the installation of Windows 11 on non-compliant systems and make us upgrade or buy a new computer.

Dru2 · Jan 11, 2022

spapakons said:
They add these requirements for two reasons. One is to tell that Windows 11 is the most secure OS on compliant computers. The other is to discourage or prevent (they wish) the installation of Windows 11 on non-compliant systems and make us upgrade or buy a new computer.

I seriously doubt they think they could do this (stop people from installing 11 on unsupported machines). I think it's more about Whether Windows 11 will function properly on "unqualified" machines.

Microsoft is simply warning there is a hardware baseline and if your PC is below that baseline you may run into issues. And that those PCs won't be supported.

That said, I think it's way too early to fully access where these "unsupported" PC's stand as there hasn't even been any major Windows 11 updates/upgrades yet; So, it remains to be seen if said updates/upgrades will actually skip or fail to install on said machines.

That's the next step in this will they/won't they waiting game for unsupported PC's.

Winuser · Jan 11, 2022

Dru2 said:
I seriously doubt they think they could do this (stop people from installing 11 on unsupported machines). I think it's more about Whether Windows 11 will function properly on "unqualified" machines.

I think MS knows that they can't stop users from installing Win 11 on unsupported machines. At most the want to discourage as many users as possible. I worked for 38 years in Public Works, and I know from experience that the majority of people will not listen to what you tell them to do. They have to do it their way even if they know it's wrong.

Dru2 · Jan 11, 2022

I spent 26 years in the U.S. Air Force and people there didn't listen either. It happens no matter where you work.

Winuser · Jan 11, 2022

Dru2 said:
I spent 26 years in the U.S. Air Force and people there didn't listen either. It's human nature no matter where you work.

It's not actually where I worked. It's that because of my job I had to deal with the public and got to (to put it nicely) see how they follow directions.

Dru2 · Jan 11, 2022

Winuser said:
It's not actually where I worked. It's that because of my job I had to deal with the public and got to (to put it nicely) see how they follow directions.

Right, and as a supervisor I've also had to end people's career because they couldn't/wouldn't follow simple rules, so I get it. You'd think if you didn't understand anything you knew rule breaking in the military could end badly for you. Yet that didn't stop people from breaking them.

Then there's the ones who didn't follow safety procedures and ended up paying with their lives

spapakons · Jan 12, 2022

Regarding minimum system requirements, these are always higher to ensure Windows will work with the minimum possible issues (ideally without issues) and at a reasonable speed on a given system. For comparison, the minimum system requirements to install Windows 7 32-bit are 1GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 20GB HDD and I did a little experiment back then managing to install Windows 7 32-bit on an old Pentium III 700MHz, 384MB RAM, 10GB HDD. OK, it was too slow to be usuable, but I wanted to determine the absolutely minimum system I could run Windows 7 32-bit. Similarly, Windows 11 require TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot, but it IS possible to install it in less compatible machine. You just miss the more advanced security features. Of course anyone installs Windows 11 on unsupported machines at their own risk. This doesn't mean is it forbidden or impossible to do so. And no, your computer is not going to get full of viruses or blow on your face, don't believe any bull$hit you read. It will be exactly as safe as it would be if running Windows 10 64-bit with the same settings and same applications. No more, no less. For unsupported machines Windows 11 is exactly the same as Windows 10 64-bit with a new skin. Fully supported machines are securer, but again you can enable these features in Windows 10 64-bit as well. Windows 11 enables them by default, that is the only difference.

Dch48 · Jan 12, 2022

spapakons said:
Regarding minimum system requirements, these are always higher to ensure Windows will work with the minimum possible issues (ideally without issues) and at a reasonable speed on a given system. For comparison, the minimum system requirements to install Windows 7 32-bit are 1GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 20GB HDD and I did a little experiment back then managing to install Windows 7 32-bit on an old Pentium III 700MHz, 384MB RAM, 10GB HDD. OK, it was too slow to be usuable, but I wanted to determine the absolutely minimum system I could run Windows 7 32-bit. Similarly, Windows 11 require TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot, but it IS possible to install it in less compatible machine. You just miss the more advanced security features. Of course anyone installs Windows 11 on unsupported machines at their own risk. This doesn't mean is it forbidden or impossible to do so. And no, your computer is not going to get full of viruses or blow on your face, don't believe any bull$hit you read. It will be exactly as safe as it would be if running Windows 10 64-bit with the same settings and same applications. No more, no less. For unsupported machines Windows 11 is exactly the same as Windows 10 64-bit with a new skin. Fully supported machines are securer, but again you can enable these features in Windows 10 64-bit as well. Windows 11 enables them by default, that is the only difference.

So far that may be the only difference but down the road, it won't be. It's not the only difference though. There are others but they're mostly minor.

spapakons · Jan 12, 2022

That's why one should have a full system backup of Windows 10 before upgrading an unsupported computer to Windows 11. If eventually something goes wrong, he can backup his latest data, format and restore Windows 10. Otherwise he will have to reinstall Windows 10 and everything else from the beginning, not very convenient. I just hope that day will never come and eventually my Windows 10 backup will be very old and useless.

Dch48 · Jan 12, 2022

Yes and I would predict eventual problems for your Core 2 Duo system.

spapakons · Jan 13, 2022

If you mean my Acer laptop, this is going to be my son's laptop to play some casual games. If something goes wrong, I will just format and install Windows 10, so I don't care. Al long as Microsoft doesn't make any major changes to Windows 11, it will remain identical to Windows 10 64-bit with a new skin and some minor changes in the user interface. If some future build is totally different and incompatible with the CPU (using new instructions found only on newer CPUs), then I will probably stick with the latest compatible build. I think that kind of change to the code is unlikely because it would be like rewriting the OS from start and would introduce major incompatibilities with existing software. Remember when Apple removed Rosetta from Mac OS X? Many legacy applications could not run and users were forced to upgrade all their old applications. I don't think Microsoft wants thousands of unhappy customers, so they should avoid doing something similar, leaving Windows 11 compatible with all computers running Windows 10 64-bit, albeit if they don't meet all the requirements.

Dch48 · Jan 13, 2022

You say using the new instructions is unlikely but they have already said that it is going to happen and that it's the reason why so many semi-new processors that are completely capable of running the OS were excluded.

Apple and Google both regularly exclude older devices from getting their latest OS. Microsoft is just following suit in this case.