Let's install Windows 11 on a incompatible hardware

Hi.

Inspired on this thread: Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware - Windows 10 Help Forums

Many of us PCs is incompatible for Windows 11.
But, Let's force Setup to install W11.

I managed to install Windows 11 on a 2014 Dell laptop having no TPM support as follows:

1. Install Windows 11 in a Hyper V VM and configure
2. Create a disk partition for Windows 11, mount the Hyper V .vhdx drive and copy all files from the Hyper V .vhdx drive to the Windows 11 partition
3. Use bcdedit to create a mulitboot menu option for Windows 11
4. Reboot to Windows 11 and let Windows Update find all the drivers need. This worked fine for my laptop and all drivers were found.

How about this :


Cheers
jimbo

Oh we've just started and already have this topic! I love it!
Now let's run it on a Core 2 Duo iMac from 2009 and MSI AM1i (AMD Athlon 5350) desktops without TPM!

ish4d0w said:

Oh we've just started and already have this topic! I love it!
Now let's run it on a Core 2 Duo iMac from 2009 and MSI AM1i (AMD Athlon 5350) desktops without TPM!

Click to expand...

Yeah. I started this thread because my PC that I daily-driving isn't supported by Win11 by:
No TPM 2.0 (even PTT)
DirectX 9 iGPU
2nd gen Core i3 2100

My first started thread about TPM is:

Hi there
Not for the fainthearted -- I'm messing around with a Virtual TPM - totally disabled TPM in hardware so I want to see if the emulated one works in a virtual machine. As I know Linux I'm trying that first - then I'll see if I can "poodlefake" the same on a Windows host.

I'm using QEMU/KVM for creating the W11 VM. - Those who don't use Linux please skip - but I think the point of the thread was to get W11 to install on incompatible hardware one way or another. If I can get an "Emulated TPM" to work in a Windows VM on Linux I'll then see if the same can be done on Windows Host.

Anyway : install package swtpm with any dependent packages (usually something like libswtpm) and check the emulator is installed.

[root@hestur hrafn]# swtpm --version
TPM emulator version 0.6.0, Copyright (c) 2014-2021 IBM Corp.
[root@hestur hrafn]# mkdir -p /tmp/mytpm12
[root@hestur hrafn]# sudo chown tss /tmp/mytpm12
[root@hestur hrafn]# sudo swtpm_setup --tpmstate /tmp/mytpm12 --createek --create-platform-cert --ove
rwrite
Starting vTPM manufacturing as root:root @ Fri 25 Jun 2021 11:47:57 AM UTC
TPM is listening on Unix socket.
Successfully created EK.
Successfully authored TPM state.
Ending vTPM manufacturing @ Fri 25 Jun 2021 11:47:58 AM UTC
[root@hestur hrafn]#

Now create your VM adding the TPM device to your VM config - choose emulated device

I'll see if the encryption thing works -- not quite sure how complete though this version of W11 currently is. There's quite a slew more things like encryption keys etc .

Lot more work than I thought !!!!

The current version of W11 - (the leaked iso) doesn't actually seem to do anything with TPM at the moment if bitlocker / encryption etc not used so a more substantive test will be when an official iso is released.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
Not for the fainthearted -- I'm messing around with a Virtual TPM - totally disabled TPM in hardware so I want to see if the emulated one works in a virtual machine. As I know Linux I'm trying that first - then I'll see if I can "poodlefake" the same on a Windows host.

I'm using QEMU/KVM for creating the W11 VM. - Those who don't use Linux please skip - but I think the point of the thread was to get W11 to install on incompatible hardware one way or another. If I can get an "Emulated TPM" to work in a Windows VM on Linux I'll then see if the same can be done on Windows Host.

Anyway : install package swtpm with any dependent packages (usually something like libswtpm and check the emulator is installed.

[root@hestur hrafn]# swtpm --version
TPM emulator version 0.6.0, Copyright (c) 2014-2021 IBM Corp.
[root@hestur hrafn]# mkdir -p /tmp/mytpm12
[root@hestur hrafn]# sudo chown tss /tmp/mytpm12
[root@hestur hrafn]# sudo swtpm_setup --tpmstate /tmp/mytpm12 --createek --create-platform-cert --ove
rwrite
Starting vTPM manufacturing as root:root @ Fri 25 Jun 2021 11:47:57 AM UTC
TPM is listening on Unix socket.
Successfully created EK.
Successfully authored TPM state.
Ending vTPM manufacturing @ Fri 25 Jun 2021 11:47:58 AM UTC
[root@hestur hrafn]#

Now create your VM adding the TPM device to your VM config - choose emulated device

I'll see if the encryption thing works -- not quite sure how complete though this version of W11 currently is. There's quite a slew more things like encryption keys etc .

Lot more work than I thought !!!!

Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

Looks like there's an Windows version of QEMU/KVM:

jbcarreon123 said:

Looks like there's an Windows version of QEMU/KVM:

Download QEMU - QEMU

www.qemu.org

Click to expand...

Hi there
I think that's much too much Overkill --
some people have tried porting TPM emulator to windows though : PeterHuewe/tpm-emulator
but I'm quite a way from playing with Windows Hosts so far !!! and of course if you need TPM to install Windows 11 in the first place how do you then install W11. However possibilities for running as a VM on a Windows Host of course.

cheers
jimbo

Hi folks
The emulated TPM works -- now for the real fun !!!!!! - Note in the computers hardware BIOS I've disabled the hardware TPM and installed the emulated one on the HOST OS.

Before adding sensible video drivers, network etc I just wanted to see if the Windows VM recognises the TPM which it does. It shows also IBM as the manufacturer of the TPM which is indeed the case of the emulated TPM installed on the HOST.

from HOST console
[root@hestur hrafn]# swtpm --version
TPM emulator version 0.6.0, Copyright (c) 2014-2021 IBM Corp.

Now from Windows VM



Now the real work starts

Time for a big BEER break !!!!

!!!!

cheers
jimbo

My desktop is a really OLD one -- no UEFI, no Secure Boot, no TPM, at all -- but yet, I wanted to try Win11.

So, I read about the following method, did it, and it works -- my OLD incompatible desktop is running Win11 without any issues and all the apps and drivers carried over without any problems at all.

The method (which I did not invent myself) is the following:
1) You need two ISOs -- Win10 and Win11. For Win10, I used the latest Insider Dev ISO I made using UUPDump
2) Create a folder from where you want to install Win11, extract the Win10 ISO to that folder
3) Mount the Win11 ISO, copy the install.wim file to the extracted Win10 ISO folder
4) Install now from the Win10 extracted folder

This apparently runs the Win 10 installer -- which I know works on my equipment because I have installed Win10 hundreds of times (being an Insider) but it then actually installs Win11.

And, since I did this as a repair-install over the top of a cloned copy of my Win10 production setup, I ran into no activation issues either, and since I am using a local login, I don't have to deal with using an MSN account with a leaked Win11 install.

This method probably can be used indefinitely. When the supposed Win11 release comes out for Win10 Insider Dev next week, if that has the same hardware requirements as the leaked Win11, then I will simply repeat this process over the top of Win10 Dev -- and be off and running Win11 again.

Love it! I may be doing that.

Mark Phelps said:

My desktop is a really OLD one -- no UEFI, no Secure Boot, no TPM, at all -- but yet, I wanted to try Win11.

So, I read about the following method, did it, and it works -- my OLD incompatible desktop is running Win11 without any issues and all the apps and drivers carried over without any problems at all.

The method (which I did not invent myself) is the following:
1) You need two ISOs -- Win10 and Win11. For Win10, I used the latest Insider Dev ISO I made using UUPDump
2) Create a folder from where you want to install Win11, extract the Win10 ISO to that folder
3) Mount the Win11 ISO, copy the install.wim file to the extracted Win10 ISO folder
4) Install now from the Win10 extracted folder

This apparently runs the Win 10 installer -- which I know works on my equipment because I have installed Win10 hundreds of times (being an Insider) but it then actually installs Win11.

And, since I did this as a repair-install over the top of a cloned copy of my Win10 production setup, I ran into no activation issues either, and since I am using a local login, I don't have to deal with using an MSN account with a leaked Win11 install.

This method probably can be used indefinitely. When the supposed Win11 release comes out for Win10 Insider Dev next week, if that has the same hardware requirements as the leaked Win11, then I will simply repeat this process over the top of Win10 Dev -- and be off and running Win11 again.

Click to expand...

Your old, incompatible is running a pre-release leaked build. Do remember that this is a very very early leak, just like the 9xxx series leaks of Windows 10 well before there was an official Technical Preview release.

That being said - Microsoft says it is not supported. Doesn't mean more techheads won't figure out similar workarounds with newer, later builds, as well. I expect that to happen - but I'm not banking on it happening. Ifthey hardcode the CPU requirements into the kernel, a lot of people are gonna be in trouble. That's why I keep harping on teh word supported versus anything else they say.

johnlgalt said:

Your old, incompatible is running a pre-release leaked build. Do remember that this is a very very early leak, just like the 9xxx series leaks of Windows 10 well before there was an official Technical Preview release.

That being said - Microsoft says it is not supported. Doesn't mean more techheads won't figure out similar workarounds with newer, later builds, as well. I expect that to happen - but I'm not banking on it happening. Ifthey hardcode the CPU requirements into the kernel, a lot of people are gonna be in trouble. That's why I keep harping on teh word supported versus anything else they say.

Click to expand...

Well-said -- and it's possible the workaround won't work much longer and may fail as early as next week's supposed Win11 preview release. But if that does happen, then I'm guessing I have about a years before the RTM and when I do need to then do hardware upgrades to my PC.

Mark Phelps said:

Well-said -- and it's possible the workaround won't work much longer and may fail as early as next week's supposed Win11 preview release. But if that does happen, then I'm guessing I have about a years before the RTM and when I do need to then do hardware upgrades to my PC.

Click to expand...

Longer than that - officially, (as of right now) Windows 10 is fully supported through 14 Oct 2025.

0 reason to upgrade now (with the lack of tech parts driving prices higher than they really should be on just about everything electronic).

jimbo45 said:

I'm using QEMU/KVM for creating the W11 VM. -.... If I can get an "Emulated TPM" to work in a Windows VM on Linux I'll then see if the same can be done on Windows Host.

Click to expand...

For a Windows host OS, instead of QEMU you could try a Hyper-V Gen 2 virtual machine . Hyper-V has performance comparable or outperforming that of Linux KVM and Gen 2 VMs have virtual TPM 2.0 support.

jbcarreon123 said:

Looks like there's an Windows version of QEMU/KVM:

Download QEMU - QEMU

www.qemu.org

Click to expand...

Yes there is but it is not what you'd expect. To simplify things: QEMU can run in two modes: emulation mode and native mode. Emulation mode is unbearably slow so native mode is what we're looking for, but that needs some help. jimbo45 is running native mode with the help of KVM, this is why he adds "/KVM" after the name QEMU, this is an excellent help to QEMU to speed it up. But KVM is a Linux solution, Windows does not have it so you need something else. There is Hyper-V from Microsoft which is, kind of like KVM's "sister" on Windows. You can get QEMU to utilize that in some cases. But it should not be necessary as Windows 10 has full support for Hyper-V VMs and with it alone, you can run Gen 2 virtual machines on Windows host without QEMU. It even has virtual TPM 2.0 support and is blazing fast!

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
I think that's much too much Overkill --
some people have tried porting TPM emulator to windows though : PeterHuewe/tpm-emulator
but I'm quite a way from playing with Windows Hosts so far !!! and of course if you need TPM to install Windows 11 in the first place how do you then install W11. However possibilities for running as a VM on a Windows Host of course.

cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

Yes it is an overkill, I recommend using Hyper-V Gen 2 virtual machines with virtual TPM 2.0 support built in. No need to rely on QEMU for this on Windows host.

Hi there
Interesting -- however does the TPM support work if you've either disabled in BIOS the TPM or your CPU / MOBO doesn't have it. The KVM solution doesn't rely on there actually being a physical TPM module. I'll try a HYPER-V GEN 2 solution on a spare INTEL laptop (disabling the TPM in the BIOS) to try and replicate creating a VM on a machine that doesn't have TPM.

I don't need to do anything with the VM but just see if Windows "recognises" the virtual TPM hardware. It's one thing adding support in the VM config but another to get the Windows VM to recognise it. !! For instance if I disable TPM and don't run the TPM emulator then the Windows VM doesn't recognise the TPM device,

If HYPER-V has a built in "TPM" emulator that's an interesting solution for primary Windows users of course

Maybe @Kari - any ideas on "Virtual TPM emulation on a VM with HYPER-V" if the Host either doesn't have TPM or it's been disabled.


I'll have a go later today with this -- not much else going on currently --and anything to get out of a "trip to the Supermarket" on a Sat afternoon. !!!!

Another query for the Windows cognoscenti. What's Windows 11 currently doing with TPM - looking at the activity log - doesn't seem to be doing anything with it - it recognises that it exists - but again I'm only using the leaked iso - the next in line official ones might be more informative.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
Interesting -- however does the TPM support work if you've either disabled in BIOS the TPM or your CPU / MOBO doesn't have it. The KVM solution doesn't rely on there actually being a physical TPM module. I'll try a HYPER-V GEN 2 solution on a spare INTEL laptop (disabling the TPM in the BIOS) to try and replicate creating a VM on a machine that doesn't have TPM.

I don't need to do anything with the VM but just see if Windows "recognises" the virtual TPM hardware. It's one thing adding support in the VM config but another to get the Windows VM to recognise it. !! For instance if I disable TPM and don't run the TPM emulator then the Windows VM doesn't recognise the TPM device,

If HYPER-V has a built in "TPM" emulator that's an interesting solution for primary Windows users of course

Maybe @Kari - any ideas on "Virtual TPM emulation on a VM with HYPER-V" if the Host either doesn't have TPM or it's been disabled.


I'll have a go later today with this -- not much else going on currently --and anything to get out of a "trip to the Supermarket" on a Sat afternoon. !!!!

Another query for the Windows cognoscenti. What's Windows 11 currently doing with TPM - looking at the activity log - doesn't seem to be doing anything with it - it recognises that it exists - but again I'm only using the leaked iso - the next in line official ones might be more informative.

Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

Hello jimbo45,

Glad to hear about the quest -- I haven't tested it with the TPM disabled as I have bitlocker enabled and disabling it would rain fire on me -- but I'd give it a high probability that it does work since it is virtual hardware.
Please post back once you have tried it, I'm curious!

You would need Windows 10 Pro, Education or above for this to work as the Home version does not have full Hyper-V support.
In case you have any of these higher editions, just type "features" into the start menu and choose "Turn Windows features on or off". Make sure to choose the old control panel option as this one had not been fully ported into the new pc settings app. There is a manage optional features that is already in the new pc settings app and start menu offers that too, but you can't set it up from there / make sure not to use that.

Once you're in "Turn Windows features on or off" just enable the Hyper-V role. Then reboot and type hyper-v into start menu. From the you can either launch the Hyper-V control panel or use the quick-create hyper-v vm to create one right away.

Remember, turning on Hyper-V would instantly disable ANY 3rd party virtualization apps running on that PC, such as virtualbox or vmware or android emulator. It will also disable other virtualization apps such AV Kaspersky's or Avast's virtual sandbox environment. To be more precise it wouldn't actually disable them but prevent their engine from utilizing your hardware's virtualization engine (intel VT-x or AMD-V) as Hyper-V requires sole access.
If you require these 3rd party apps to work then you might be able to route some of them through Hyper-V, just like you did with QEMU using KVM. For this to work, you would need to also enable this role: "Windows Hypervisor Platform"
In fact, VMWare can use Hyper-V engine and Virtualbox just gained support too. These apps should not be necessary as Hyper-V can run VMs on it's own, but I'm writing just in case you have old VMs in these apps that you want to keep using.

You can also consider enabling additional roles alongside Hyper-V too, such as Virtual Machine Platform which is actually, support for WSL2, enabling you to run terminal console Linux distros such as Ubuntu downloaded from the Microsoft Store app with native speed and native linux filesystem. The Windows Subsystem for Linux role which you can also find in this menu is actually the older version of WSL, WSL1. You can enable both of them and you can switch between them. The main difference is that WSL1 does not use Hyper-V and is slower but useful if you cannot/dont want to enable Hyper-V for the aforementioned reasons.

Happy testing!

jimbo45 said:

Maybe @Kari - any ideas on "Virtual TPM emulation on a VM with HYPER-V" if the Host either doesn't have TPM or it's been disabled.

Click to expand...

I have both Secure Boot ad TPM disabled on all my W11 UEFI / GPT (Generation 2) virtual machines:



In addition, I have clean installed W11 on a BIOS / MBR (Generation 1) VM, which according to official, at the moment available info should not be possible.

Kari

Hi there
Thanks

@Kari

Just created a HYPER-V gen 2 W11 pro on a W10 host with TPM disabled in hardware but enabled secure boot. Might play around with some of the encryption as the "Virtual TPM" says it can create a key.



The TPM shows up OK with the manufacturer as MSFT.

So it looks like VM's will run whatever the actual hardware is.

I used the "Quick create" --if I tried "Install OS later and then added hardware DVD (image) I got boot failures - but that's probably my inexperience with HYPER-V rather than an inherent problem.

Anyway I want to see if the encryption does anything now.

(I kept to no network connections initially to avoid having to use an Ms account).

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

So it looks like VM's will run whatever the actual hardware is.

Click to expand...

Not only that. I have also created both GPT and MBR partitioned W11 native boot VHDs, added them to host boot menu, disabled host secure boot and TPM in UEFI settings, and then successfully booted to those VHDs.

Kari