Let's install Windows 11 on incompatible hardware

SIW2 said:

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"The least CPU Windows 7 or 10 supports, is an 5th-generation Intel processor."
Thx!
I've missed that part.

@jbcarreon123
That's luckily not the case. Windows 7 runs on anything these days.

jbcarreon123 said:

...The least CPU Windows 7 or 10 supports, is an 5th-generation Intel processor.

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Hopachi said:

Thx!
I've missed that part. @jbcarreon123 That's luckily not the case. Windows 7 runs on anything these days.

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It's interesting to note that MS also publish lists of supported processors for Windows 7 - and that none of my older machines that were supplied by their OEMs with W7 pre-installed have a processor that's on any of those lists.


(Source)

As stated on another post in this thread Windows 11 Setup does not check compatibility when running on a virtual machine, only on physical computers. But there are various ways to bypass these checks. You either use Windows 11 Setup and hack the Registry to bypass the checks, or tweak Windows 10 Setup (that never checks compatibility) to install Windows 11 instead. I managed to install Windows 11 on an old dual core laptop, see my specs.

Like it you clever dudes.

@Xploit Machine you've shared your email to the whole world, please edit images in your post as soon as possible

SlicEnDicE said:

@Xploit Machine you've shared your email to the whole world, please edit images in your post as soon as possible

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oh I'm sorry .. overlooked, thanks and I have edited the attachment as per advise :)

Minimum system I have run Windows 7 32-bit was an old Pentium III 700MHz and 384MB RAM (128MB + 256MB). Of course it was slow as hell, but I wanted to check if it can be done. The graphics card had no WDDM driver and I installed the Windows XP driver (XPDM). So Windows 7 have much lower requirements than 8 and 10. Windows 8 and 10 32-bit require 1GHz CPU with PAE/NX support and at least 1GB RAM for installation, 2GB for upgrade from Windows 7. After installation or upgrade, they can run with 512MB RAM but they will be really slow. Moreover both cannot use the Windows XP graphics driver and require a WDDM driver. If there is not one, they will force Microsoft Basic Display Adapter without any hardware acceleration and will be like ten times slower!

Xploit Machine said:

oh I'm sorry .. overlooked, thanks and I have edited the attachment as per advise :)

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You forgot one-under onedrive. Need to blank it out as well.

glasskuter said:

You forgot one-under onedrive. Need to blank it out as well.

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done thanks :)

Update:​

I customized Win11 with some programs, even I customized the DMG forums (and some sites) using Stylus.

I'm running Win11 in a VMware VM and it runs great. Like with just about every other thing folks wanted to tweak with Windows from as far back as I remember, tech heads across the world have figured out workarounds with Windows 11 as well and will continue after release. The thing is, this does not help the masses out there who still have serviceable machines and would like to have 11, but do not have enough knowledge of computers to speak the jargon, let alone make any workarounds.

After making a system image backup of the installed Win10 with Macrium I've just had a go installing 11 on an old HP Laptop.
Clean install and got around the TPM issues etc. by following the Regedit method posted on here and also on Bleeping Computer.

HP Pavilion g6 2213
AMD A8-4500 APU
8.00 GB RAM (7.47 GB usable)
Radeon HD Graphics
IDT High Definition Audio (Dolby)
WD Blue 500 GB SSD


Early days but so far so good. :)

For anyone trying on one of these, here's a link to my Google Drive. These are the Graphics and audio drivers I used with Windows 11;

Graphics and audio drivers

Another success. A refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad T450 laptop running Windows 10 Pro 64-bit Greek, successfully upgraded to Windows 11 Pro 64-bit latest build after deleting the appropriate file from ~Windows.BT\Sources folder during Setup (see earlier posts in this thread).

Hi, my first post here!
I'm pleased to report that I managed to install Windows 11 on my 12 year old motherboard!
I got a Windows 11 ISO using the procedure detailed here, but it wouldn't install as it of course failed the system requirements check.
Thanks to the workaround detailed here, I managed to get around that and do a successful clean install, which seems to be working fine!

I'm not using it seriously yet, and it will be a long time before I will, but good to find that it is possible to update even on my old hardware.
Gives me something new to play with anyway!

It has done several Windows Updates with no problem, to 21H2 Pro build 22000.160.
I'm rather hoping that once it's installed, it will stay installed through whatever updates come, and won't suddenly tell me that I can't run it any more!
It does seem to work fine as I said on my old hardware, I don't think my x5460 Xeon processors are officially supported, letalone the motherboard with no secure boot or TPM.

Just shows how artificial these restrictions are, as it actually works perfectly on the hardware!
I'm not in the Windows Insider program though, so am I right in assuming that although Windows 11 itself will carry on updating through Windows Update, I won't get any app updates apart from the normal Windows 10 ones?

Cheers, Dave.
:)

DaveH said:

I'm not in the Windows Insider program though, so am I right in assuming that although Windows 11 itself will carry on updating through Windows Update, I won't get any app updates apart from the normal Windows 10 ones?

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Welcome to Eleven Forum (didn't I see you on Ten Forums a little while ago? )

Yes, as I said over there, we non-Insiders get all the OS updates, but the new versions of some apps are only delivered if you join the Insiders program.

Yep, that was me!

I suddenly thought that I should join here as well as I'm now a Windows 11 user!
Let's hope my installation carries on working.
Thanks for the confirmation of what you'd already told me!
Cheers, Dave.
:)

DaveH said:

I got a Windows 11 ISO using the procedure detailed here, but it wouldn't install as it of course failed the system requirements check.
Thanks to the workaround detailed here, I managed to get around that and do a successful clean install, which seems to be working fine!

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I wonder if those "workarounds" work with recently officially released Win11 insider preview ISOs (and not the ones from UUP dump) as noted from this thread:

There should not be a difference

check this out spapakons - someone in reddit did install a Win11 build on a old Pentium 4 system -