Installing Windows 11 on unsupported devices

[Nic_Bunting]

Late to the party for this, but pretty fired up about MS and their actions. Especially the blocking of comments on their recent Facebook adverts.

My customers reject Linux straight away because of the differences - they don’t like change and Linux is too much for them. A lot of my customers get flustered if the Office icons look different…

But… if I get a PC with at least a dual core CPU, 4GB RAM and a solid state drive then I use a Windows 11 install USB that’s been made with Rufus. This has the CPU and TPM check removed.

When the setup is run from within Windows 10 it upgrades to Window 11 pretty much flawlessly. With no loss of data and no need to reisntall.

The issues I’ve encountered are that older versions of Office deactivate - specifically Office 2010 and 2013 - and Start menu modification tools need removing and updating.

But apart from that, Windows 11 works flawlessly. This has worked for Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro machines.

If the PC doesn’t have a solid state drive then that’s a cost effective upgrade - with the existing drive cloned over before the drives are swapped out.

What do people think?

[Michel]

All opinions have already been expressed I think. My “customers” are usually like yours.
A big annoyance I just experienced with Windows 11, although with a compatible model, is the appearance of a window at startup asking you to activate Hello and register, with no “opt-out” button. I got rid of it disconnecting and reconnecting, that window didn’t come back, but it’s something that will no be so easy to explain to the customers. It looks pretty much like a forced adoption of Hello and a MS account.

[Nic_Bunting]

To be fair, most of my customers have a Microsoft Account because their computer told them they needed one.

Windows 10 was keen on this and adults being adults just tended to go along with it.

The steady erosion of the local account availability on first boot means only the determined don’t have one now.