Win11 Install on Older Machines Running Win 10

I have two old machines running Win10 and they actually run very well. One is a Gateway AIO ZX6600 with Core2Quad and other is an HP Pavillion p6703w with AMD processor. In both machines the OS is installed on a SATA SSD and my data on a 2TB WD Black HDD. Both machines have 8GB of RAM. I'm considering updating both to Win11 using Rufus since they are unsupported. I use the machines mostly for office work and internet. Questions:

1. Will I see slower performance with Win11 than Win10?
2. If I remove the data HDD and install Win11 on the SSD drive can I then reinstall the HDD and point the user documents, videos, music and photos to this drive or would I lose my data by doing that?
3. I use Office 2016 and my emails accounts are all IMAP. I have a PST file on the data HDD of the AIO where I put my address book and old emails I want to save and archive. I should be able to point Outlook to that on the new install - correct?

Thanks in advance.

Hi:
I've got an 2018 Dell G3779 and installed Windows 11 in 2021. I didn't notice slower performance than Windows 10. So answering Question 1, in overall it does not get slower.
Question 2. In a fresh new Windows install you can point the user documents, videos, etc. in a new or existing second drive.
Question 3. Don't remember too much, I don't use Desktop (Office 2013/2016/2019/2021) Outlook a long time ago. I think yo can point your pst file to another location. So in theory yes, you can.
Source : Move an Outlook Personal Folders .pst File

Hope it helps you

1 - My personal experience has been that Win 11 actually seems to run better than 10, especially on old hardware. I have seen many others comment the same, but YMMV.

2- Nope, you won't lose that data. A data disk is just that; another disk with data on it. Win 11 is every bit as capable of accessing that as was Win 10 .

3 - I don't use Office 2016, I'm always on the latest because I use Microsoft 365 so maybe someone else can correct me or state this with 100% certainty, but my expectation would be that if it worked on 10, it should work on 11.

Outlook with IMAP use *.ost data files and they cant be transferred to the new installation (I had a nightmare on a Win 10 reistallation and to save all emails). Backup and restore Outlook ost data files

My suggestion is to buy a SSD, clone the Win 10 on it, detach the current Win 10 drive and then upgrade the new SSD to Win 11.

Megahertz said:

Outlook with IMAP use *.ost data files and they cant be transferred to the new installation (I had a nightmare on a Win 10 reistallation and to save all emails). Backup and restore Outlook ost data files

My suggestion is to buy a SSD, clone the Win 10 on it, detach the current Win 10 drive and then upgrade the new SSD to Win 11.

Click to expand...

Is it possible to do an upgrade to Win11 using Rufus. I thought you could only do a clean install on nonsupported older machines?

bfunke said:

Is it possible to do an upgrade to Win11 using Rufus. I thought you could only do a clean install on nonsupported older machines?

Click to expand...

I didn't understand.
Yes you can upgrade from Win 10 to Win 11 on unsupported computers using the workarounds.

There are many ways to install Win 11 on unsupported computers. Rufus is just another way.

Megahertz said:

There are many ways to install Win 11 on unsupported computers. Rufus is just another way.

Click to expand...

yup, even on an old laptop PC with an Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile CPU (a little older & slower than the OP's Intel Core 2 Quad based Gateway PC), which I just did several months ago

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