Alchemy Mindworks

Most of our existing Windows computers were seriously offended when their Windows 10 installations told them that they were unsuitable for upgrades. Windows 11 requires several hardware elements that weren’t included in computers until relatively recently, and an officially approved processor.

Windows 11 would have those older machines disposed of and replaced with shinier toys.

The hardware requirements of Windows 11 ostensibly make it a more secure environment. The degree of its enhanced security is somewhat theoretical, however. If you feel that you rather than Microsoft should be the final arbiter of your system security, you might take comfort in knowing that Windows’ pronouncement on the worthiness of your current computer is far from absolute.

You can sneak around its wall and install Windows 11 with relatively little work.

Newer and faster processors are a treat, but you can run Windows 11 on far more modest hardware. We’ve been doing so for several years as of this writing – it’s actually a bit quicker than Windows 10 in some regards.

The timeless Dell desktop computer at the beginning of this posting was one of the recipients of Windows 11. Back in the day, it shipped with Windows 7.

This posting will discuss installing Windows 11 where it might not officially want to be. As you might imagine, there are a few catches to doing this, to wit:

• You’ll have to get your hands dirty – some recourse to the Windows registry editor application will be required. Nothing therein should cause readers of this post to run screaming from their digs.
• Microsoft has intimated that Windows 11 installations on older, unsupported hardware may not receive updates in the future. We’ve seen no evidence of this to date – with one notable exception – but there exists the possibility that it could occur.
• You’ll need to ignore a few scary warnings during installation.

Note: The following discussion involves making changes to the system settings and major changes to your computer’s operating system. While the likelihood of all this going sideways and negatively impacting Windows… and your ability to use it… is remote, the possibility exists. By reading beyond this paragraph you agree that Alchemy Mindworks accepts no responsibility for any loss, damage or expense caused by your use of this page and the information therein, however it occurs. If you read any further, you accept these terms and you indemnify and hold blameless Alchemy Mindworks and all its stockholders, employees and suppliers from any and all monetary costs including attorney’s fees and court costs arising out of your use of this page and any information provided by it. We are unable to provide assistance with anything discussed in this posting.

Before You Begin

While our experience of upgrading unsupported hardware to Windows 11 was entirely unadventurous, we hasten to observe that doing so has the potential to trash your existing Windows 10 installation and leaving your computer completely bricked. We’d like to urge anyone reading this post to clone the hard drives to be upgraded before doing anything else. Click on the foregoing link for a discussion of how this works. If the whole circus becomes pear-shaped, you’ll be able to restore your pristine Windows 10 installation and try again.

Windows 11 wants to see some specific hardware resources to run Windows 11, these being Secure Boot, TPM and EUFI Boot. While we won’t get into what these are up to just now, you should begin this adventure by finding out if they’re available in your hardware. Restart your computer and access its BIOS screen – usually by holding down the F2 key while the system starts up. Make sure there are options available to enable Secure Boot and TPM, and a choice between Legacy and EUFI booting. Don’t enable anything yet.

You can exit the BIOS screen and boot your computer normally.

To be sure what hardware Windows thinks your computer has, you should also get to a command prompt and run Msinfo32.exe. Make sure that the Secure Boot State option is present, and preferably, is on. It can be enabled in the aforementioned BIOS screen if it’s available, but not active – we’ll get back to some BIOS settings later in this posting.

Finally, run Tpm.msc to see if TPM is enabled. Once again, if it’s not, you’ll be able to light it up from your BIOS screen when we’re done, assuming it’s available.

In the event that your computer proves not to have Secure Boot and TPM options, read a little further in this posting for a procedure to get around these requirements.

Don’t Look Back

In order to upgrade to Windows 11, you’ll need to download the Windows 11 DVD-ROM installer image, an ISO file, from Microsoft. Click on the foregoing link to get it.

The first step in upgrading to Windows 11 on unsupported hardware involves some registry editing. Get to a command prompt and type regedit. Windows’ registry editor will open.

Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and navigate to SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup. If there is no entry for MoSetup, create one, like this:

1. Right-click on SYSTEM\Setup.
2. Select New, and then Key. A new key will be created.
3. Rename the new key MoSetup.

You’ll now need to add a new DWORD to SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup. Select MoSetup and right-click anywhere near it. Select the menu item to create a new DWORD. Change the name of the new DWORD to AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU. Double-click on your new DWORD and change its value to 1.

You can exit the registry editor and restart your computer.

Windows is now ready for an upgrade. Open File Explorer and navigate to where you downloaded the Windows 11 installation ISO file Double-click on the ISO to mount it in a virtual drive. Its contents will include setup.exe. Double-click on this item to begin the upgrade. You’ll see a scary message about your hardware being unworthy and ill-regarded. Click on Accept.

The Windows 11 upgrade has options to keep your current applications, settings and files; keep your current settings only; or wipe your hard drive and install a completely pristine Windows 11 environment. The latter two choices will necessitate reinstalling a lot of files and software, and likely will not be where you want to go. Select the option to keep your applications, settings and files.

Once the Windows 11 upgrade gets started, you should arguably leave the room and make yourself a sandwich, pour some wine, find some nearby woods and go for a prolonged hike or otherwise prepare for a substantial wait.

When the Windows 11 upgrade is complete, you’ll need to restart your computer and return to its BIOS screen as discussed earlier, probably by holding down F2 as it boots up. Switch from Legacy to EUFI booting, and enable Secure Boot and TPM. Save these changes and exit your BIOS screen to allow your computer to boot up Windows 11.

If everything worked, you should have a Windows 11 installation that looks more or less like Windows 10 did, with all your existing software installed and ready to rock.

Chances are you’ll want to repair and refine a few minor issues. Also, be prepared for a Windows environment that’s not quite as friendly as Windows 10 was, at least by default.

Ancient Times

If you have a really old computer to upgrade to Windows 11 – one that lacks TPM and a Secure Boot boot option – you’ll need to pursue a somewhat more elaborate installation process. Specifically, you’ll need the Rufus application to create install media that bypasses Windows’ security checks. You can download Rufus at the foregoing link.

Note that this procedure requires Rufus 4.6 or better.

Run Rufus and create a bootable USB flash drive with the Windows 11 install ISO on it. Open the Windows User Experience dialog and enable the check box to Remove Requirements for 4GB RAM +, Secure Boot and TPM 2.0.

Create the USB drive. When Rufus has completed its deliberations, open the USB drive with File Explorer, and double-click on setup.exe, as discussed earlier in this posting, to begin your Windows 11 upgrade.

Aftermath

We encountered relatively few genuine issues with our Windows 11 upgrades. We use TP Link USB Ethernet adapters on several machines, which Windows 11 decided were CD-ROM drives. An updated driver downloaded from TP Link addressed this.

All the software that ran under Windows 10 got along with Windows 11. Your mileage may vary.

The Windows 11 start menu is still more objectionable than the one in Windows 10. We immediately banished it by installing OpenShell, which turns it into a simple, highly-configurable Windows 7-style Start menu. Click on the foregoing link – it will save your walls from a lot of dents in the shape of your head.

The structure of the right-click context menus in Windows 11’s File Explorer and on its desktop has changed. By default, they show you abbreviated menus, with the option to display more items and essentially behave like Windows 10’s right-click menus. You’ll need to select this option every time you use one, however, which gets old fairly quickly. You can disabuse them of this behavior and see classic right-click context menus by default like this:

1. Copy this text to the Windows clipboard: reg add HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32 /ve /d "" /f .
2. Get to a command prompt.
3. Paste the copied text into the command prompt and hit Enter.

The next time you restart Windows, all the afflicted right-click menus will have returned to their behavior as its was in Windows 10.

The Windows 11 task bar doesn’t allow for small icons, and as far as we’ve been able to determine, there’s no way to persuade it otherwise. You can improve its behavior to some extent, however.

Open Settings from the Windows Start menu and select Personalization. Scroll down until you find the Task Bar item and click on it.

We preferred the following settings:

• Hide Search.
• Disable Task View.
• Disable Widgets.

In Task Bar Behaviors:

• Set the Task Bar Alignment to Left.
• Enable Automatically Hide the Taskbar.
• Combine Taskbar Buttons and Hide Labels Always.

Our experience thus far has been that our upgraded Windows 11 installations get security and bug fix upgrades just like they did under Windows 10. Rumor has it that Windows 11 won’t provide major version upgrades to computers with frowned-upon older processors. Should this prove to be true, you’ll need to manually install them, just as you did the upgrade discussed in this post, using a download ISO file.

The USB flash drive and Windows laptop graphics in this posting were generated by ChatGPT with OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, as provided by Windows CoPilot.