My Top Hat off to you, sir. Impressive, if I may say.
(I’ll leave mine by your back door….
).
Does anyone know when windows 11 is out?
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Can’t fault my new kit, it’s pretty damn quick!
Upgrading makes you realise just how far behind a 10 year old motherboard/CPU and memory can get. I just found an old computer case, so now I’m installing all the old kit I took out of my desktop case and I’ll donate it, minus the operating system obviously! Otherwise, it’ll be good to go, good enough for someone’s kid for school work anyway.
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I’ve now fully transitioned from W10 to W11 on both my recently rebuilt desktop after receiving the pushed update. It’s working well and to be honest, I am now used to it’s small differences from W10.
Laptop, well that was a slightly different state of affairs. I’ve had W10 Home edition on it since upgrading all the way back from Windows 7 I think, the laptop itself is now 6 years old. As many will have discovered if they haven’t enabled TPM 2.0 or UEFI secure boot in the BIOS, the big notice about how your computer isn’t compatible, mostly regarding unsupported CPU’s, will have been a familiar sight on Windows Update. Anyway, I enabled UEFI secure boot and I did the easy registry hack to allow all updates and accepted the warning that if I upgraded my computer might not work as intended or I might not get any supported updates from Microsoft in the future.
Well, I’m pleased to say, it all went well. After the registry hack and a restart, the Windows 11 update was there in updates and so I let the PC do its thing without saving any files or apps to allow as clean an installation as possible without having to use a bootable USB stick. Anyway, as is usual after a clean install, the system still requires Windows updates and they were all there ready to download. So, if anyone else fancies giving it a shot, it can be done, just make sure you back up your stuff before you take the plunge.
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Well played. One question though. What is the registry hack ?
I just used this page and followed the instructions:
It is actually really easy to do, but the obvious warning applies, you’re making a change to the registry and if you aren’t confident, even following the insanely easy instructions contained within, then I suggest you don’t do it.
If you decide to go ahead, once you’ve done the regedit, restart your computer, go into Windows updates and as long as you’ve already enabled TPM 2.0 and secure boot, the Windows 11 update should magically appear.
My own situation is, that my CPU in my laptop isn’t officially supported, entirely because of the age of the machine, it was built in 2015. However, the laptop does have a minimum of 2 cores and has 4gb RAM, so it’s all worked out fine.
I would however suggest, that if you’ve been successful in loading Windows 11 via the update, that you then back up your personal files and perhaps Apps to a external hard drive and then go into Windows Recovery and reset this PC. You will then get as clean a copy of the OS without having to completely reload the OS from a disk image. It’s just easier doing it the way I’ve done it.
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Thanks @Topsy2 , I fancy a challenge - living on the edge. And fear not, this is a no-blame forum……
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The only real risk is that Microsoft don’t guarantee that future updates to Windows 11 will continue to work on your PC if you use the registry hack. Whereas if you stick with Windows 10, that is guaranteed to continue getting security updates until 14th October 2025.
However, given how widespread use of the hack has been, I suspect Microsoft will try to maintain unofficial compatibility as long as they can, and not deliberately introduce breaking changes, so future updates will probably be OK at least for a while.
It’s also worth knowing that you can always roll back to Windows 10 if the upgrade goes poorly - it’s worth extending that period up to the maximum 60 days, using these instructions, just in case. But you have to follow the instructions straight away after installing in order to buy yourself the 60 days.
PC Health Check also gives an idea about what, exactly, on your PC is considered incompatible.
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I reckon Microsoft won’t be bothered at all. As you say, enough people have now used the various hacks to get around the whole unsupported CPU issue, I can’t see that it would even be in Microsoft’s interest to stop pushing out the updates.
It’s clearly evident in my situation, that the Windows 11 os works perfectly well on my old laptop. In any case, even if Microsoft did stop pushing Windows 11 updates to me on my laptop, I wouldn’t be that bothered if I’m honest. It is after all, a soon to be, 7 year old laptop which is in use every single day. If it gives up the ghost, I’ll just purchase a brand new one and that will come with W11 anyway.
All my own computer knowledge is completely self taught or by watching youtube videos. I’ve built 3 desktops from scratch over the last 15 years and it just gets easier. I use a PC parts picker website and match stuff up and screw it together, job done. My current desktop incarnation, cost me around £600 for my exact specification, everything from motherboard, CPU, RAM, new power supply unit, new keyboard/mouse, all Intel and MSI gear. The only bit of kit I didn’t change, was my SSD hard drive, a Samsung EVO which to be honest, is now knocking on a bit, but it works just great.
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I agree.
I wouldn’t recommend that a novice user bother doing this unless they are having issues which they suspect have been caused by the in-place upgrade.
It’s quite a hassle to have to reinstall everything (even though copying files back is relatively easy) and Microsoft’s upgrade process has become much more reliable over the years to the point where it’s not really necessary to have a clean slate anymore.
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To be honest, not a huge amount of hassle for me personally. But, one of the main reasons I decided to do a PC reset after the W11 upgrade, was because when I went into windows update on my PC, all of the updates from W10 were still listed there, several dozen of them. When I reset the PC with effectively a clean install, it got rid of any references to W10 updates. Just a clean up operation for me that made me feel better 
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Fair enough!
I just don’t think the majority of users would need to bother - in your case, I’m sure Windows Update would have sorted itself out within a few days.
I’ve completed the final chapter in my desktop PC upgrade. I’ve now finished my whole setup off with a curved monitor. It’s a lot easier on my eyes than my old monitor and a refresh rate of up to 165hz fully supported in Windows 11 with my onboard Intel graphics card. Money well spent in my eyes!
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And well spent “on” your eyes 
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