Let's install Windows 11 on incompatible hardware

Just out of curiosity, I checked prices for the cheapest possible upgrade to current generation Intel (CPU + M/B + RAM). Just for the cheapest current Intel model and the cheapest motherboard you need over 400€. The prices for RAM are insane! 8GB DDR5 cost more than buying a cheap motherboard! No way! So I will keep my "humble" 3rd generation Core-i7 (2nd system specs) as long as I can. I don't give a damn if I am not officially Windows 11 compliant!

PS: I am not sure if AMD would be cheaper and I don't care. Intel is known to be much faster in single core processing and since I play old games and most of my apps are older, single core performance and compatibility are more important to me than number of cores and saving a few bucks. Besides you don't but a computer every day, it's worth the extra money to buy something better. Similarly I prefer nVidia over AMD to get best performance.

spapakons said:

Similarly I prefer nVidia over AMD to get best performance.

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that part of nvidia vs amd is debatable

erpster4 said:

that part of nvidia vs amd is debatable

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True, but I remember using crap ATI graphics cards in the '90s and I hated ATI (now AMD) since then. nVidia always was better in appearance. Looking at a monitor with an ATI card connected the colors were not neutral, sometimes too vivid and the picture was too sharp the edges appeared weirdly discolored, not solid black. I had to tweak the image from Control Panel to make it better. Any text wasn't very readable until I tweaked ClearType. With an nVidia card it was almost perfect out of the box but I optimized the colors anyway. Also contemporary nVidia cards could play more games better than ATI cards. Now AMD graphics might have good candidates, but I am an nVidia fan, so I will pass. Besides, I think nVidia has some technologies AMD still hasn't and high end nVidia cards outperform high end AMD cards. So it is Intel CPU, nVidia graphics, Microsoft Windows/Office, Adobe Reader/Acrobat (other PDF makers are not as good as the "real" thing) and other software. Anything else is a compromise in my opinion. Sure, you save some bucks, but you get what you pay for as they say. All of us that pay a little more for an Intel CPU or nVidia card have a good reason to do so.

this is the result of installing an nvidia graphics driver (v8.17.11.9642) on an old HP computer with onboard Nvidia Geforce 6150se / nForce 430 hardware and running Win11 23H2. Google Chrome & other "Chromium" based browsers like MS Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, etc. display a "blank" white window (and staying like that). I get the same result when installing the latest version of the nvidia display driver (v9.18.13.908) for Geforce 6150se as well (a completely "white" browser window for Chrome); ditto for v8.17.11.9621 {196.21} as well. I do not have this kind of weird "graphics" problem in Win10 (hence one of the "risks" in running Win11 on such old hardware)

only when I install an older version of the nvidia graphics driver (like v8.17.11.9562) on Win11 23H2 that I would get this result:



a Google Chrome browser window being shown properly
looks like I'll have to use much older nvidia graphics drivers on Win11 (from 195.62 & below) if I want to surf the web using Google Chrome or other Chromium based browser

no such display/graphics problems when using AMD or Intel graphics drivers on my other old PCs running Win11

I have seen this before. I use an old computer at work with 32-bit Intel Celeron socket 478 CPU, 1.5GB RAM and very old nVidia TNT2 graphics running Windows 7 32-bit. There is no WDDM graphics driver (Vista or higher), so I have to use the Windows XP driver (XPDM mode). Latest driver supports DirectX 9.0 but has a lot of incompatibilities and BSODs. So I either have to disable hardware acceleration and be as slow as Hell, or use an older driver that only supports DirectX 8.1 but gives hardware acceleration and speed is acceptable. Latest driver is not always the best choice. As long as it works flawlessly I accept that.

Similarly in your case, just use whatever driver works, it doesn't matter. I would suggest to disable hardware acceleration in your browser, but since it works fine with the older driver, it is better to use this driver. To prevent Windows Update replacing the working driver, use either Microsoft's Windows Update Show/Hide Tool or Windows Automatic Update Manager (aka WAU Manager) to block any driver updates. Both are available from Major Geeks.

I recently updated my main PC (see 2nd system specs) to Windows 11 25H2 build 26200.8037. It might be my idea, but I think my PC is rendering videos a faster than before. The nVidia graphics driver wasn't updated. Probably better resource management. So update your systems too.

I upgraded an HP Compaq Elite 8300 SFF, using Rufus 4.6. It's working great, but we'll see how it handles the next update cycle.

I'm wondering about upgrading my bare-bones music rig at some point. It's an i7 3770 Ivy Bridge. No TPM chip, but it has a header available. I'm sure I could Rufus it, but perhaps installing a TPM chip would be better? The CPU is still too old, of course, so why bother? No guarantee that if I do the chip, it would even work. I've seen where you have to then do a clean install, update the bios, etc. I prefer upgrades, due to the large number of music plugins I have, which all have to be activated. With the upgrade, everything just works. Plus, I keep my local account, no MS account needed/forced on me.

I should point out that, until very recently, I was happily using Windows 7. Then some of my software stopped working. I knew that day would probably come, and now it has. So I upgraded the music rig to 10, and it's working great. No deprecation worries, at least for a long time. So I'm in no rush to upgrade further to 11. I'll wait and see how the HP machine does, and maybe at some point try the update. For now I'm happy with W10, and W11 on the other machine.

I also have a desktop (all my machines are desktops, though my wife prefers laptops). We have a very old Gateway which still has Vista and Windows 7 on it. Plus Ubuntu and Mint. We have W7 and Bodhi (Linux) on her old Dell Inspiron. And I'm thinking of upgrading her HP notebook to W11. Another job for Rufus. That machine also has Zorin (Linux) on it, and she prefers that to W10. She likes the Dell for Excel, but has to do it on Bodhi, as W7 overheats that old thing, which is literally falling apart. I successfully put Office 2010 on Bodhi. She just won't use any other Office but MS. It is the best I guess, though I can use almost anything. It pays to be adaptable.

The next upgrade 26H2 coming in October 2026 will also be available as an Enablement Package for systems running Windows 11 25H2. This means it will have the same system requirements and it can be installed as a common Windows update without checking compatibility. Of course don't expect to be offered to our unsupported computers via Windows Update. We will have to manually download it and upgrade. So any computer running 25H2 doesn't need to do a full upgrade using the ISO, just download and install the 26H2 Enablement Package.

Regarding your 3rd generation Intel Core-i7 3770 system, don't worry, it will work fine with Windows 11. Use any available drivers, Windows 10 64-bit or Windows 7 64-bit. Any 64-bit drivers work except for Intel graphics drivers for Windows 7 which are locked to install only on Windows 7. My main PC (see 2nd system specs) is also a 3rd generation Intel Core-i7 3770. My motherboard has UEFI firmware without TPM and Secure Boot. Since my first SSD was a small 250GB model, I intentionally installed Windows 11 in Legacy BIOS mode (MBR partition style) to avoid the two extra system partitions required in GPT partition style. I have never noticed any performance or compatibility issues compared to UEFI mode installation.

Great information, Spapakons. I do prefer legacy mode, and may try that way next time I install W11. The more they try to "improve" things, the more problems seem to occur. It happens in Linux as well. software developers cannot leave well enough alone. Just today, I booted up Windows 11 to stream my favorite classical music station, but Firefox had updated, and it would not open the page. Furthermore, the new tab had a bunch of news stories I did not want to see, such as "Why ABC had to ditch The Bachelorette." That was the lead "news story." Firefox did not ask my permission to ignore my preferences, and put this slop on my new page. It just did it. I had to shut down and boot Ubuntu 16, a 10 year old system (but receiving ESM updates from Canonical) so I could open the page. By then the water I had put on for my morning coffee had almost boiled away. All because Firefox felt they had to "improve" my user experience. And so it goes.

Since Firefox 145 version, Mozilla changed the way drawing the screen, trying to use Windows Apps SDK. This on my dual monitor system crashes every time I tried to switch to full screen when watching a video, because it could not calculate my second monitor screen limits. The solution is to go to about:flags and toggle a specific flag from true to false to stop Firefox using the Windows Apps SDK and switch to the old screen drawing method. See my last post on the New Firefox version thread.

spapakons said:

Since Firefox 145 version, Mozilla changed the way drawing the screen, trying to use Windows Apps SDK. This on my dual monitor system crashes every time I tried to switch to full screen when watching a video, because it could not calculate my second monitor screen limits. The solution is to go to about:flags and toggle a specific flag from true to false to stop Firefox using the Windows Apps SDK and switch to the old screen drawing method. See my last post on the New Firefox version thread.

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Thanks, I will check that out. However, right now I'm on Brave, on Windows 10. I may end up just staying with it. It's what I use on Ubuntu 16, because I can't get any other browser to work on such an old system, without breaking something else, like updates.

You can use R3DFOX which is a fork of Firefox modified to run on Windows Vista and Windows 7. It is faster than Supermium which is a fork of Google Chrome for these systems.

I know about R3dfox, I use it on Vista and it works great. There are all kinds of options here - Pale Moon, Vivaldi etc. I'll eventually settle on one.

Pale Moon reminded me of the Joker's question to Batman in an old MS-DOS game, "Have you ever danced with the Devil in a Pale Moon light?" You could see Joker asking this question in case you lose all lives and game was over. The same game was available on Amiga and other home computers of the era. Thankfully I can play it again with DosBox MS-DOS emulator or WinUAE Amiga Emulator.

Ha Ha, my experience of Batman is limited to comic books, and the hilarious American TV series of the 1960's. I was just a kid then, and I eagerly anticipated this show, expecting it to be on a par with the old Superman series. When it came out and was obviously a farce, I was at first disappointed. But I soon came to love it, and still do when it sometimes comes on late on Saturday night, after Svengoolie. (Yes, sadly, I don't have much of a life these days).

I have settled on Brave browser. It just works on everything, even 10 year old Linux systems.

To remind old folks and teach newer posters, here it is:


If you have the choice play it with a joystick because the default MS-DOS keys (Q,A,O,P) for moving Batman are not very convenient. Due to limited hardware capabilities most games of the era could not use graphics or sound to make them attractive to players, unlike today. So they focused on gameplay and were very addictive. Many today's games try to produce realistic graphics but appearance is not everything. Gameplay should be important too.

How to run Windows 11 on an old Intel Celeron:




Don't tell anyone, this is a secret workaround... Scroll down to read...



































Happy April Fool's Day! The only way to "run" Windows 11 on an old Intel Celeron is this:

Download and install AnyDesk, run Anydesk, connect to another computer running Windows 11. That's what I do from my old work computer running Windows 7. I connect to my home PC running Windows 11 and use my modern apps, then transfer my files back to work. Much faster than browsing with R3DFOX and using Office locally.

Even though it has apparently been around for a few years, I just learned about Ventoy (USB Boot Drive creator). I read that you can use it to create a boot drive with multiple ISOs on it. I'd love to make one and have both a Windows Install Disk (for repair) and Hasleo (or Macrium). However, one of my machines is "incompatible" with 11. For those that are experienced...does Ventoy have options to remove install restrictions, like Rufus?

mccmw said:

does Ventoy have options to remove install restrictions, like Rufus?

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2022/12/24 --- 1.0.86 release

Enable VTOY_WIN11_BYPASS_CHECK and VTOY_WIN11_BYPASS_NRO by default.

Thanks...I'll have to try it out!