Upgrade Win 10 to Win 11, using the setupprep.exe method. Bypasses all hardware checks.

sdowney717 · Feb 8, 2024

No need to update 10 to latest version first.
Bypasses all hardware checks. So it will upgrade to win 11 older PC that do not meet their requirements. The CPU requirement is terrible as normally it wont allow an installation on older CPU like 7th gen INTEL CPUs.
This PC I updated to 11 version 23H2, is core2duo and it is running great on 11 PRO.

Simple to do
Download win11 disc image file at Microsoft. File is about 6.4gb, you want the ISO file, scroll down the web page it is the last method in their list.

Mount the ISO file by rightclicking select mount.
Click open
Look in file manager to see what drive letter it is mounted at, mine was F:

open CMD prompt as admin
goto F: (wherever it was mounted) , as in type F: enter
type DIR to see the files and folders of the mounted iso, that way you know you are in the right drive folder
Type CD sources

Then type setupprep.exe /product server
Select type of install, I chose keep files, folder, programs,

Windows 11 will install
If your PC was activated, it remains activated

It will say installing server, but it is installing windows 11, and it will install either home, pro, or whatever matching version you have
Leave command prompt window open

No need to use a USB drive or boot from it.
Then walk away, no interaction is needed.

sdowney717 · Feb 8, 2024

I will add that all my PC use SSD as their windows drives as otherwise, performance is atrocious and slow. I updated them all to either Sata SSD or NVME m.2
That is the one major hardware improvement that really is good if you want a PC that is decently quick to boot and work well.

Ghot · Feb 8, 2024

@sdowney717

You might want to edit your title, to something like this...

Upgrade Win 10 to Win 11, using the setupprep.exe method. Bypasses all hardware checks.

sdowney717 · Feb 8, 2024

Ghot said:
@sdowney717

You might want to edit your title, to something like this...

Upgrade Win 10 to Win 11, using the setupprep.exe method. Bypasses all hardware checks.

ok, if that makes it easier to understand

Ghot · Feb 8, 2024

sdowney717 said:
ok, if that makes it easier to understand

Yeah. Originally it looked like you might be "just" updating Home to Pro (all Win 11 though).
When you "read" the post, it makes sense, but you needed the title to get folks to read the post.

I know things like this. I used to make awesome garage sale signs.

sdowney717 · Feb 8, 2024

snip of this system specs running 11 pro
and nicely, it is sleeping again, it stopped sleeping on win10, wasting electricity.
I see it is actually a core2 quad CPU, not core 2 Duo.

spapakons · Feb 9, 2024

You can also run setup /product server from the root folder of F: (or whatever), no need to run the setupprep.exe. I have recently found that this trick works for upgrading an unsupported computer from Windows 10 or an old Windows 11 version to the newer Windows 11 version. It doesn't work for a clean installation as Setup is already running and if you try to quit it will restart the computer.

spapakons · Feb 9, 2024

Try the good old Registry patching method for clean installation or the appraiserres.dll replacement. It should still work. Please confirm here so we know. Also there are rumours that Germanium is a new version of Windows, probably Windows 12 Preview.

ExBrit · Feb 13, 2024

I've seen several articles elsewhere regarding 24H2 or perhaps a later version will block attempts to bypass the requirements as I did with my 23H2 & earlier. I couldn't challenge them as they were published in media. That would go against Micrsoft's announcement that they woulf not do that, so I'm hoping they are not true.

spapakons · Feb 13, 2024

In other thread was mentioned that new Canary (Insider's preview) versions cannot be installed in Legacy BIOS mode, only in UEFI mode. Of course there is a workaround involving replacing the bootloader with an older version that supports Legacy BIOS mode after every restart until installation is complete. I guess a similar workaround will make it possible to install 24H2 on unsupported computers. But it is too early to worry about it.

ExBrit · Feb 13, 2024

Agreed

Yev · Feb 18, 2024

spapakons said:
In other thread was mentioned that new Canary (Insider's preview) versions cannot be installed in Legacy BIOS mode, only in UEFI mode. Of course there is a workaround involving replacing the bootloader with an older version that supports Legacy BIOS mode after every restart until installation is complete. I guess a similar workaround will make it possible to install 24H2 on unsupported computers. But it is too early to worry about it.

The hardware requirement for 24H2 is the POPCNT instruction set (Nehalem+ or Phenom+) so it's not related to the boot mode.

W10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 (21H2) will keep you patched until 2032

The next LTSC will be W11 24H2

Wisewiz · Feb 18, 2024

spapakons said:
Also there are rumours that Germanium is a new version of Windows, probably Windows 12 Preview.

Germanium is the 24H2 engineering milestone of Windows as a service taking place since late August 2023, the commercial release of which is Windows 11, version 24H2 and Windows Server 2025.

Source: Germanium - BetaWiki.

spapakons · Feb 18, 2024

I mentioned that Canary's UEFI mode only booting can be bypassed if you replace the bootloader with an older version as required. Similarly 24H2 requirement for PopCnt instruction might be possible to bypass by replacing the kernel (ntoskrnl.dll or other files) with the 23H2 version. An alternative would be to patch the 24H2 much like we patched the Windows 8 kernel to install it on old Pentium 4 computers without NX/PAE

Yev · Feb 19, 2024

spapakons said:
I mentioned that Canary's UEFI mode only booting can be bypassed if you replace the bootloader with an older version as required. Similarly 24H2 requirement for PopCnt instruction might be possible to bypass by replacing the kernel (ntoskrnl.dll or other files) with the 23H2 version. An alternative would be to patch the 24H2 much like we patched the Windows 8 kernel to install it on old Pentium 4 computers without NX/PAE

Would it be worth it at that point? So many cheap used pcs out there..

Berton · Feb 19, 2024

I had used the appraiserres.dll replacement process on 2 Notebooks from 2014 to Upgrade from within Win10 and they passed Patch Tuesday updates with no issues.

Try3 · Feb 19, 2024

Berton said:
I had used the appraiserres.dll replacement process on 2 Notebooks from 2014 to Upgrade from within Win10 and they passed Patch Tuesday updates with no issues.

Yes, it's Version 24H2 that creates a new problem that a blank appraisres.dll cannot solve.

Denis

Bree · Feb 19, 2024

Berton said:
I had used the appraiserres.dll replacement process on 2 Notebooks from 2014 to Upgrade from within Win10 and they passed Patch Tuesday updates with no issues.

Try3 said:
Yes, it's Version 24H2 that creates a new problem that a blank appraisres.dll cannot solve.

An early look at 24H2 is available as the latest Insider Dev build. MS have disabled the appraiserres.dll and 'Setup /product server' workarounds in 24H2. The only one that (currently) still works is the setupprep.exe method. There is no possible workaround for the PopCnt instruction requirement though, but that only affects a few really old CPUs. Some of mine from 2010 are 24H2-capable.

Bree said:
You may be surprised (well, I was, at least) just how humble a processor and how far back you can go and still find a '24H2-capable' CPU. The oldest I have in working machines (still in regular use) are a Pentium B950 (Q2 '11) and an AMD V120 (Q2 '10).

spapakons · Feb 19, 2024

Yev said:
Would it be worth it at that point? So many cheap used pcs out there..

For the main computer probably not, thankfully its 3rd generation Intel Core-i7 3770 does support SSE4.2 and PopCnt, so I won't have any issues. My test laptop probably doesn't support PopCnt, so I could try to force 24H2 to extend its lifetime, otherwise I will stay with 23H2 and install all updates until EOL.