Running And Updating Windows 11 Without A Wire

Source: Ars Technica Running And Updating Windows 11 Without A Wire

Not That Most People Want To Pay For Microsoft ‘Support’ Anyways

This topic has been covered before but with the pending demise of Windows 10 in just under a year it is worth repeating for those who would like to move to a supported version of Windows 11 without having to buy new hardware.  A writer at Ars Technica have posted their experiences with running Windows 11 on a variety of  unsupported hardware, from systems that have most of the prerequisites, barring a supported CPU, to systems lacking TPM altogether.  It does require a bit more work than running a supported system, but there were no performance or stability issues using the systems.

Installation is a snap, either with a wee registry hack or by triggering the install with a specific command, setup.exe /product server.  The challenge is getting the major updates; security patches flow easily but feature updates like Windows 11 23H2 or 24H2 don’t show in Windows Updates.  In order to install those updates you are required to grab the full version from Microsoft and install from scratch.  Thankfully in many cases you are able to retain your data, though the older the machine the more likely you’ll have to do a fresh install.  You will also want to toss at least 16GB of RAM in the machine to feed Windows 11’s insatiable appetite for memory.

Learn all the tricks you’ll need right here.

But this is more than just a theoretical exercise; I've been using Windows 11 on some kind of "unsupported" system practically since it launched to stay abreast of what the experience is actually like and to keep tabs on whether Microsoft would make good on its threats to pull support from these systems at any time.

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About The Author

Jeremy Hellstrom

Call it K7M.com, AMDMB.com, or PC Perspective, Jeremy has been hanging out and then working with the gang here for years. Apart from the front page you might find him on the BOINC Forums or possibly the Fraggin' Frogs if he has the time.

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