Let's install Windows 11 on incompatible hardware

Sounds interesting, I will read it. For the record the minimum possible system I have successfully installed Windows 11 21H2 (22H2 wasn't released yet) was a desktop with Intel Pentium 4 640 CPU (3.2GHz, 64-bit single core with Hyperthreading, socket 775) with 2GB RAM, Legacy BIOS, not UEFI, not TPM, no Secure Boot, not even a SATA hard disk, it had an IDE hard disk. Let see you beat that

I am reading the suggested link above and I want to warn you against using the Windows 11 Upgrade tool. Anything official from Microsoft (Upgrade tool, Media Creation Tool, Windows Update) will absolutely check compatibility and prevent an incompatible computer from installing or upgrading to Windows 11. Read older posts in this thread how to bypass compatibility check in either clean installation or upgrade. Don't trust everything written in the suggested link. This thread is more trustworthy.

Edit: I misunderstood, it was referring to an Upgrade tool at GitHub, not the official Windows 11 Upgrade Assistant. But everything you read there confirm it with posts from this thread to save you wasting time and get disappointed.

PS: The methods described in the suggested link are valid for 21H2. To upgrade to 22H2 you must also disconnect from the internet to prevent online compatibility check and Windows Update messing with your working drivers during installation. If you forget to disconnect and remain online you will see that compatibility check is bypassed, the upgrade starts, but it will fail after a while before copying all the necessary files to restart and proceed. I have confirmed that on at least three unsupported computers. Disconnect from the internet before upgrading.

flashh4 said:

I have not tried this, my wife said leave her computer alone because she only uses it for games & Face Book ! Version 21H2 (OS Build 22000.1042)
............ 9/20/22
Mine has the 22H2 newest update & it runs with all MS requirements ! Now with that said i have friends who run on unsupported hardware & say they have updated to 2H22 from same set up as my wife and this works ! Any of you tried this update on unsupported machines ??

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He stated that deleting appraiserres.dll doesn't work anymore for upgrades or updates.
He supplied another appraiserres.dll to replace it with.

Right-click on the desktop and create a new text file. No need to open it, just rename it to appraiserres.dll by deleting all the name, including the .txt extension. If by mistake you leave the extension it will be appraiserres.dll.txt and of course it won't work.

There are many threads in which members had upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11 with unsupported CPU.


However this thread reported a BSOD with bugcheck 5D unsupported processor on an upgrade attempt using VMW guest OS.






For those using VMW please comment on how guest OS is used and how it might impact upgrades.

Stigg said:

He stated that deleting appraiserres.dll doesn't work anymore for upgrades or updates.
He supplied another appraiserres.dll to replace it with.

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That's how I upgraded/updated mine. I had the registry hack before(TPM Bypass and Secure Boot Bypass), and then I found the script from github that somebody posted on Youtube. I could get my security updates with those, but not Cumulative and Insider Previews. I was getting error messages(sorry I don't have the exact error #s now), but there were three of them. I was going around in circles between Windows Update, Troubleshooting Windows Updates, and running sfc /scannow and DISM. I thought I was going to lose my mind.
I did a clean install of Windows 11 and then did what Jens had on his Youtube and his blog, swap the dll file with the one he supplied. I was surprised as it worked! Everything installed just fine, and I'm getting all updates cumulative and Insider previews, and Stack packages flawlessly now.
I'm on the Beta channel as I tried the Dev channel before, and it caused me nothing but problems, and then I ended up reinstalling Windows again. I'm not a techie, just a normal person who wants to keep their system updated with new features and security.

I've had Windows 11 successfully installed and running relatively easily on a Gateway M series 6337 laptop (Garnet red) with 4Gb of ddr2 RAM and a dual core Pentium processor at 1.7 GHz running all of its original last support update Windows 7 drivers but I do find a weird that the supposed requirements for the openGL and DirectX driver systems don't really appear to be requirements at all.
Torrent sites are full of pre-activated and TPM removed versions of Windows 11 even custom Editions that also come de-bloated with performance upgrades and Telemetry completely disabled. They're about half the size of a standard installation.

In VMWare Player or other virtualization applications to install Windows 11 there are two ways. You either make the virtual machine compliant or you treat it as unsupported computer and bypass compatibility check. The second way is easier, but if you insist on trying the first, you must make the virtual machine boot in UEFI mode, not legacy BIOS. Then you must enable TPM 2.0 (don't know details, I have only read about it once) and encrypt the virtual machine before installing Windows 11. Of course you must also enable TPM, Secure Boot and boot the Windows 11 ISO in UEFI mode.

My Surface Pro 3 processor isn't supported but it passes the TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot requirements. I bypassed the CPU check and all is good. Windows 11 can't even tell the device on which it runs is ineligible!

NormanF said:

My Surface Pro 3 processor isn't supported but it passes the TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot requirements. I bypassed the CPU check and all is good. Windows 11 can't even tell the device on which it runs is ineligible!

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Oh, it can still tell . When the next major update is released, you won't be offered that update. However, that can be worked around easily enough.

Agree with @hsehestedt: I had no trouble getting the last major update by using the information provided by @Brink on this site. My main (fully compliant) machine was offered the update; my non-compliant wasn't, so I used Brink's links. (Hey, I like the sound of that!)

I just read 10th of January will be end of support for Windows 7 and 8.1 What are you waiting for? Bypass compatibility check and install Windows 11! If you run Windows 8.1 you can even bypass compatibility check and upgrade directly to Windows 11. You don't need to install Windows 10 first.

Are you recording the product ID?
Is gatherosstate no longer needed?
What steps are you using to go directly from 7 to 11 and / or 8.1 to 11 and have a proper activation?

If you have Windows 7 you must first install Windows 8.1 or 10, you cannot upgrade directly to Windows 11. I would skip 8.1 and upgrade to 10 first, then 11. If you have Windows 8.1 you can upgrade directly to Windows 11, I have done it, at least from Windows 8.1 Pro to Windows 11 Pro.

Wisewiz said:

Brink's links. (Hey, I like the sound of that!)

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@Brink 's Links...

Today I replaced the faulty hard disk with an SSD on an unsupported laptop (Intel 965 chipset). I tried to clean install Windows 11 in UEFI mode with Secure Boot enabled and Fast Boot enabled. After all files were copied to disk and was about to restart for the first time, it displayed an error, don't remember what it was and stopped. I didn't have to investigate, so I then disabled Secure Boot and Fast Boot and installed Windows 11 in Legacy BIOS mode instead. Installation completed without any issue. So if you try to install Windows 11 on an unsupported computer and fail in UEFI mode, switch to Legacy BIOS mode and try again. I hope that helps.

Related to my previous post, I discovered the culprit. I have created a Windows 10 UEFI mode USB Flash drive from latest Windows 10 v22H2 ISO. I then added the install.esd file from Windows 11 ISO in order to be able to install Windows 11 in UEFI mode as well. All I have to do it rename the Windows 10 install.esd into install_W10.esd and then rename the Windows 11 install_W11.esd to install.esd in Command Prompt (SHIFT+F10) before proceeding with Setup. This should install Windows 11 in UEFI mode in unsupported computers using the Windows 10 Setup. But, in new systems like the one I tried yesterday and the one with 8th generation Intel Core-i3 CPU I tried today this hack doesn't work hence the error message. When I replaced install.esd with the original Windows 10 version, I could install Windows 10 without any issue. So I conclude that the hybrid USB flash drive hack doesn't work for UEFI mode (GPT), at least in relatively new systems. Only in Legacy BIOS mode (MBR). So in order to install Windows 11 in UEFI mode on unsupported computers you must create a standard Windows 11 UEFI USB flash drive and use the Registry hacks to bypass compatibility check. Another option would be to install Windows 10 in UEFI mode instead and then bypass compatibility check to upgrade to Windows 11. I hope that helps.

I would suggest being very careful copying components between Windows images. Some Windows images contain duplicate files that need to match the versions of the same files in other images.

Just as an example of the complexity of this, here is a little sampling of how one would properly update a Windows ISO image:

1) Mount the install.wim (any one of the available indices - there are 11 on the retail edition of Windows)
2) Extract the winre.wim from the now mounted install.wim
3) Inject SSU, LCU, and SafeOS updates into the winre.wim.
4) Perform a cleanup on the winre.wim and commit the changes.
5) Copy the now modified winre.wim to the mounted install.wim.
6) Inject the SSU and LCU into the boot.wim, index 1.
7) Perform a cleanup and export of index 1.
8) Inject the SSU and LCU into the boot.wim, index 2.
9) Perform a cleanup and export of index 2.
10) Inject the SSU, LCU into the install.wim
11) Perform a cleanup of the install.wim
12) Add "other" updates to the install.wim (.NET updates as an example)
13) Export the current index of install.wim
14) If you want to update more than one edition of Windows in your ISO image, then ALL of the above steps (1 - 13) need to be repeated for EACH index to be updated. Note that if you save a copy of the winre.wim and boot.wim after updating the first time, you won't need to inject updates into them again. You just copy the updated editions.
15) Apply the Setup Dynamic Updates to the image.

This is just right off the top of my head with no reference, so forgive me if I've missed any minor details.

The whole idea here is simply to impress upon you that simply moving bits around between images is a bad idea and can lead to problems with that image. To do it properly, all of the above steps must be carried out.

If you need more info, please feel free to ask. I wrote both a batch file and program that automates all of the above steps so I have this stuff down to a science as I had to spend hours on end (months, actually) experimenting with all of this to get it just right

I was more baffled than helped by your reply. I didn't understand what you described.