Windows 10 systems - upgrade to Windows 11.

[Cadtot]

I have just completed installing Windows 11 on six non-compliant Windows 10 systems.

• These systems are eight years or older, but they are helpful in my operations.
• I considered the ESU programme, but it seemed complex and fragile, and I also didn't want to create an MS account on these systems.
• Systems were updated with Rufus as follows:
  • T7900 Dell workstation, Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2698 v4 @ 2.20GHz (2.20 GHz) (2 processors), RAM 128 GB, Nvidia Quadro M6000 24Gb (Dual Cards) - Currently a Revit/AutoCAD production workstation.
  • Del Precision 7710, Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1545M v5 @ 2.90GHz (2.90 GHz), RAM 64.0 GB, Nvidia Quadro M5000M - Back-up laptop and web authoring.
  • Dell Precision M6700 Red Edition, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3920XM CPU @ 2.90GHz, 32Gb RAM, NVIDIA Quadro K5000M - Scanning duties.
  • An Asus-based workstation, Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-9600K CPU @ 3.70GHz (3.70 GHz), 32Gb RAM, NVIDIA Quadro P1000 - used for AutoCAD script processing.

  • Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd H270M-D3H, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz (3.60 GHz), 32Gb RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, - old gaming and VR PC. This one had a legacy bios.

  •  

    Surface Pro 3 (circa 2014) Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4650U CPU @ 1.70GHz (2.30 GHz), RAM 8.00 GB, Intel(R) HD Graphics 5000.

All of these systems are nearing the end of their life and would have remained on Windows 10 until they broke, if Microsoft had continued to provide security updates.

 

Issues

Things went quite smoothly with some minor issues:

• Dell 7710 had an incompatible driver issue with the Dell Support Assist, so I removed it.
• The Surface Pro would not update existing apps, etc., until I reset the install language to US English.
  • It had been installed with Great British English, which the Windows 11 iso does not support.
  • Changed the default language in the registry from 0809 to 0409, and things worked.
  • Lost the pin login in the process, but was able to reset it.
• Everything else worked great, and I find very little difference in operation compared with Windows 10.

 

IMO, Windows 11 is Windows 10 with a new skin and tweaks to improve security and make it incompatible with older hardware to fill the world's landfills. I know that with previous versions of Windows, support ended after the user base dropped below 5%, but with Windows 10, there is still a roughly 30%/40% installed base. MS is a monopoly and I consider it has a moral obligation to continue security support of these older systems until the user base drops below 5%. "Around 400 million devices worldwide are expected to remain on Windows 10 after support ends on October 14, 2025"

In New Zealand, it is reported that 30% of PCs are still running Windows 10 and will continue to do so.

 

I wonder if I can upgrade my Surface 2 🙂

 

[Aaron44126]

Some notes.

 

Installing Windows 11 on "unsupported" systems typically is smooth, but there could be ongoing attention required, as Microsoft likely will not drop out their yearly "major upgrade" via Windows Update to such systems. So, next fall when Windows 11 26H2 comes out for example, you may need to take manual action to install it if you are running Windows 11 on an "unsupported" system. (Microsoft only supports each version for two years, unless you are on Enterprise edition where you get three years of support.) There's also a chance that Microsoft will break the experience for unsupported systems when one of these major updates comes out.

 

Windows 10 LTSC is still supported for a number of years. You can grab one of those licenses if you would prefer to stay on Windows 10 and continue to receive security support. Even though it is not "supported", there is a path to migrate from "regular" Windows 10 to Windows 10 LTSC in-place (without doing a fresh Windows install), and I have done it a number of times without issue.

 

...I have particular issues with the direction that Microsoft is going with Windows 11, so for "ideological" reasons, I am taking steps to get myself off of Windows. All of my personal workloads have been moved to macOS. I was using a Windows VM for a while, but I have managed to ditch that recently as well. I'm still on Windows for work, but that will be changing within the next 12 months hopefully (I am ready to go, but my local IT dept is holding me up). There's never been a better time to investigate macOS or Linux. I was on Linux for a while, and though some productivity software is missing, it is a great OS for "basic use" (if you can do most of your stuff in a web browser) and also for gaming (if you don't play multi-played games that use kernel-level anti-cheat).

• (macOS 26 "Tahoe" is also a mess, but that is one that will hopefully get cleaned up over the next few months.)

[kojack]

I got W11 installed on my wife's system without issue using FlyOOBE.  worked great. Just pushed the install through without losing software or files on her pc. Took about 30 mins on a 4405u cpu.