What I learned from 3 years of running Windows 11 on “unsupported” PCs

When your old PC goes over the Windows 10 update cliff, can Windows 11 save it?

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[Danathar]

I understand the desire, but other than for curiosity sake, my tolerance for friction when it comes to restrictions companies place on software/OS has gone down over the years.

If a company does not want me to run their software, then fine, I don’t. There are alternatives to windows 11 on those systems.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

" it does have a bizarre little booklight next to the webcam that shines down onto the keyboard to illuminate it."

You have disrespected the Thinklight. Press Fn+PgUp to pay respects.

 

[GaitherBill]

Loving these informative Windows 11 articles.

I’ve got one PC that runs my Plex server that I need to figure out what to do with.

It’s more than adequate for Plex and I have zero desire to upgrade its hardware.

 

[mrsilver]

This essentially means you'll need to repeat the steps for doing a new unsupported Windows 11 install every time you want to upgrade. As we detail in our guide, that's relatively simple if your PC has Secure Boot and a TPM but doesn't have a supported processor. Make a simple registry tweak, download the Installation Assistant or an ISO file to run Setup from, and the Windows 11 installer will let you off with a warning and then proceed normally, leaving your files and apps in place.

Having just gone through this in-place upgrade it's worth noting that a couple of things have changed since the linked article:

1. Don't bother downloading or running the Installation Assistant, you don't need it.
2. Run Windows Terminal as Administrator and apply all the registry changes listed in this comment.
3. Download the Windows 11 ISO and unpack.
4. Run setup.exe to do the in-place upgrade
5. Tell Windows not to bother doing any updates during the installation, as you can always do them later.
6. Make sure you select "keep files and apps", it was the default for me.

If you try to use the Installation Assistant, it'll always block you - even after you've done step 2.

 

[alphaLONE]

The thinklight was sooooo neat! Missed it from switching to an X250 in 2016. Though the Broadwell-U battery life coupled to the 100Wh of battery… let’s just say it stayed on all the time. Bring back the dual batteries, Lenovo!

 

[WereCatf]

I have an older gaming laptop in my workshop with a nice 1080p display, backlit keyboard, good speakers, 16GB of RAM, an NVMe SSD and all that, but...it's got an i7 4770HQ CPU that is not supported, nor does the laptop have a TPM, either. It's all perfectly functional hardware and plenty good for all sorts of productivity tasks still, so I very much have zero interest in tossing it away. Alas, it's one of those wonky MSI laptops that just won't work right with Linux, so I don't really have much choice than run Windows it. (plus I use various apps that don't work under Wine anyway)

 

[williamyf]

My 2018 MacMini has a Win11 supported processor (and enough performance, given it has 6 cores) but no TPM.

Bummer.

I'll stick with Win10 + ESU for my windows needs for the time being, and will re-evaluate in 2028.

Edit: 2018->2028

 

[williamyf]

I have an older gaming laptop in my workshop with a nice 1080p display, backlit keyboard, good speakers, 16GB of RAM, an NVMe SSD and all that, but...it's got an i7 4770HQ CPU that is not supported, nor does the laptop have a TPM, either. It's all perfectly functional hardware and plenty good for all sorts of productivity tasks still, so I very much have zero interest in tossing it away. Alas, it's one of those wonky MSI laptops that just won't work right with Linux, so I don't really have much choice than run Windows it. (plus I use various apps that don't work under Wine anyway)

Maybe an update to the latests firmware will activate PTT (basicaly, firmware based TPM). As ARS' guide said, even if it is TPM 1.2, having some sort of TPM will significantly improve the upgrade/update experience of Win11 in non-supported machines.

 

[williamyf]

You can certainly run Windows 11 on very old machines, but my question is, how exactly do you use them?

I have an eight-year-old Core i5 6200U laptop with 16 gigs of RAM that's a lot faster than the systems you're using, and it's a literal pain to use to browse the web. That's of course with uBlock Origin installed and enabled both in Firefox and Chrome. It's just so slow.

Secondly if your system is old enough, it may not necessarily support hardware H.264 decoding at which point watching anything on YouTube/Vimeo/etc. becomes nearly impossible.

And 1440p and above just becomes unattainable because VP9 is a quite heavy codec.

I'm all for keeping older devices whenever possible to reduce the amount of e-waste but not to the point of throwing tantrums because of how slow everything is.

Find out if you have H.264 support (most likely you have). Then use a plugin like H.264ify to force Youtube to serve you H.264 only.

Also, check the firefox and chrome configurations. Sometimes you have to tweak the (advanced) settings to make them make full use of whatever HW Acceleration you have available.

 

[williamyf]

Even without ESU, Windows 10 LTSC IoT is officially supported until January 12, 2032, i.e. for at least seven more years.

Reports of the imminent death of Windows 10 have been greatly exaggerated.

I am well aware of the existance of IoT 21H2. As I am aware of LTSC "19H2", supported until 2030.

Problem with IoT 2021 is, to use it as a desktop, you need to add back a bunch of stuff (probably from "25H2") making a frankenOS what will have most of it supported until Jan 2032, and some other parts/components supported until Oct 2028. Also, by 2028, some SW I use may balk at the idea of running on "21H2" (or worse, "19H2") instead of running on 25H2

That's why I'll wait until 2028 to re-asses the situation and act accordingly.

If, by 2028 I can do "Thunderbolt Passtrough" on linux on a macmini, maybe a KVM Type 1 hypervisor with one win11 guest and one MacOS Guest residing on my NAS via iSCSI will be the way to go.

 

[NGRhodes]

I was able to upgrade an X260 from 23H2 to 24H2 using a USB created with Rufus, booting the installer from the USB.

 

[Windowsrookie]

You can certainly run Windows 11 on very old machines, but my question is, how exactly do you use them?

I have an eight-year-old Core i5 6200U laptop with 16 gigs of RAM that's a lot faster than the systems you're using, and it's a literal pain to use to browse the web. That's of course with uBlock Origin installed and enabled both in Firefox and Chrome. It's just so slow.

Secondly if your system is old enough, it may not necessarily support hardware H.264 decoding at which point watching anything on YouTube/Vimeo/etc. becomes nearly impossible.

And 1440p and above just becomes unattainable because VP9 is a quite heavy codec.

I'm all for keeping older devices whenever possible to reduce the amount of e-waste but not to the point of throwing tantrums because of how slow everything is.

It would seem that something is wrong with your setup. I regularly use a 1st gen core i7 system, a celeron N4020 laptop, and my main device is still a 2018 MBP. All of them browse the web just fine. I also have an M1 MacBook Air, and for web browsing it doesn’t feel any faster than my MBP.

 

[Daniel]

I had to do some tricks to get win11 to install on this laptop. It's an older business class model that was a giveaway from a past job during a tech refresh. It's been running fine for the last year, no complaints. This part though was news to me that I've never seen mentioned before.

There's one exception for the PCs I've had running unsupported Windows 11 installs in the long term: They don't want to automatically download and install the yearly feature updates for Windows. So a 22H2 install will keep downloading and installing updates for as long as they're offered, but it won't offer to update itself to versions 23H2 or 24H2.

Looks like I'm currently on 23H2 now, so I guess that's what was available when I did the win11 install.

 

[mobby_6kl]

" it does have a bizarre little booklight next to the webcam that shines down onto the keyboard to illuminate it."

You have disrespected the Thinklight. Press Fn+PgUp to pay respects.

It is absolutely superior to the modern keyboard backlights.

Just one LED, simplified keyboard BOM, AND you can use it to read a paper document when in a dark environment.

Lenovo should bring it back.

 

[dahak777]

Even without ESU, Windows 10 LTSC IoT is officially supported until January 12, 2032, i.e. for at least seven more years.

Reports of the imminent death of Windows 10 have been greatly exaggerated.

While true, most general consumers cannot get access to the LTSC version as it is designed for specific business need and usually only accessible via business.

Also another thing to note is that they did change some of the CPU requirements for 24H2 also requires a specific cpu instruction, called POPCNT and the need for SSE 4.2, and the bypass tricks will not work for those if is a new install as noted here https://www.neowin.net/news/new-ruf...windows-11-24h2-unsupported-pc-cputpm-bypass/ but I have not tested it myself

 

[SpaceHamster]

There was a time when I would re-install Windows from scratch every few months to keep things running as smooth as possible (or just running at all, looking at you Win98SE and ME), using the least disk space, always be on the latest drivers, etc. Then as Windows got more reliable and the pace of hardware improvement slowed down, I stopped being so diligent to the point that I've been running the same alternatively sourced Win10 install since 2016 through three different PC builds.

At the same time I've used it for less and less. It used to be a daily driver with a WSL setup for development, but I transitioned away from that at the beginning of the pandemic when I setup a permanent "work" office that was separate from my personal space. At this point, it's just a fancy gaming console.

I have less than zero desire to upgrade to Win11. It just seems like a more annoying version of what I already have, that's just going to get in the way of me clicking on Steam with as little friction as possible.

Hopefully as the much delayed end of support comes next year, Ars will have some advice on how to either transition to Win11 as painlessly as possible, or maintain Win10 beyond the support date. I barely even care about receiving updates, but I figure at some point new games will not support Win10, and that will be what finally pushes me to upgrade.

 

[psarhjinian]

" it does have a bizarre little booklight next to the webcam that shines down onto the keyboard to illuminate it."

You have disrespected the Thinklight. Press Fn+PgUp to pay respects.

The funny thing about the X230 is that it was one of the few models that could have both the ThinkLight and a backlit keyboard. I have an T430 that has both (modded the ThinkLight red, too) and it's actually really nice.

I wish Lenovo had kept the ThinkLight in future models.

 

[psarhjinian]

Eh, just use NetBSD instead.



...what, you thought I'd say Linux? Pshaw!

 

[psarhjinian]

Find out if you have H.264 support (most likely you have). Then use a plugin like H.264ify to force Youtube to serve you H.264 only.

Also, check the firefox and chrome configurations. Sometimes you have to tweak the (advanced) settings to make them make full use of whatever HW Acceleration you have available.

Second the recommendation for H.264ify: it's really helped a lot.

For local media, I use a Plex server, which can transcode to what my machine can play, even when remote.

 

[jerome71]

Great article thanks !

One other possible use for old PCs is donation (there are a lot of people or NPOs, including in poorer countries, who would benefit from a working PC and do not have one) - I've refurbished and donated quite a few PCs and Macs and I've found it very rewarding.

My experience is that a 2012+ PC is workable with Windows, as long as you replace the spinning hard drive with a SSD and upgrade the RAM to 4, or better 8 or 16 GB.
For Macs, thanks to the good folks making OpenCore Legacy Patcher, any 64-bit Intel Mac (that is all Macs 2006+) with 4GB RAM or plus (early MacBook Airs had 2 GB non-upgradeable RAM) is still usable with macOS today, as long as you are cautious with macOS updates.

And for older Macs and PCs, Linux Mint, including its 32-bit edition, can make a 2005 PC or Mac usable, if not great today.

One remark though @Andrew - you write "If you're using good everyday security hygiene otherwise—using strong passwords or passkeys, two-factor authentication, and disk encryption (all things you should already be doing in Windows 10)"
I fully agree with the intention, but, if I remember correctly, Windows 10 (or even 11) Home does not support "device encryption" unless the PC has TPM V2 and UEFI, so I guess that some people interested by this article could not enable disk encryption.

 

[vonduck]

so.. repeating myself.
machine has all the hardware bits for tpm and secureboot. but fucking asus hid tpm in the bios and i can't enable it. skylake on z170 pro gaming.

interestingly, the touch tills at work use win10...

 

[fensox]

My experience is similar. I run an old Lenovo ThinkCentre with like a 3rd gen Intel CPU as a Minecraft and Valheim server on my LAN. Used Rufus to install Windows 11 and it has worked flawlessly for a couple years. I actually find Windows 11 runs snappier on older hardware than 10 does.

 

[ChristmasLights]

Andrew, I really appreciate you continuing to rage against the machine. Please keep fighting the good fight.

 

[gmerrick]

With Win 11 on an unsupported PC, I hope it means that MS can't force Recall or Hello as TPM should be required for both to work. (presuming you have TPM disabled or simply not available)

 

[Antron Argaiv]

The article could have explored the obvious, easy solution:
Run Linux.

I‘ve been a windows user for most of my life. But windows has gotten so bad, and Linux so easy with the latest debian releases, the only reason I still put up with windows on some of my machines is native directx.

Not a gamer, so I am curious as to what the advantage (for the home user) of running Win11 is over running Win10? Aside from the lack of security updates, of course. I do understand why businesses run Win11, but curious as to what the appeal is for the home user (aside from Windows being the "default" OS).

Yes, I run Linux at home. I got totally fed up with Microsoft's forced upgrades and constantly changing UI years ago. I do have a laptop with a legit copy of Win10 installed, sitting in a drawer, for when I need Windows (very infrequently) to run something.

 

[Fenixgoon]

So my work computer got forced upgrade to Win11, and after a week I have to say it's not as bad to me as all the internet articles had me believe. Maybe I'll convert my home computer sooner than I thought.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It is absolutely superior to the modern keyboard backlights.

Just one LED, simplified keyboard BOM, AND you can use it to read a paper document when in a dark environment.

Lenovo should bring it back.

The ability to see anything in the immediate vicinity of the keyboard, including but not limited to the keyboard, was a very handy feature. Especially since you tend to have muscle memory of all but the most obscure corners of the keyboard itself pretty quickly; but every seatback tray table is cluttered in its own unique way(especially ones of the size that existed back when it was standard).

It is honesty a pity that it got dropped; especially when the ubiquity of webcams and mic arrays means that there's already power and data run to the top of the bezel in basically all cases; and already at least one optically clear spot for the camera. Would an SMT LED with the appropriate angle really bust the budget?

I could see the incentive to drop it if it were the last piece of electrical complexity at the top of the screen assembly and you could go purely mechanical and get rid of a board and wiring harness by doing so; but that part of any contemporary laptop is busier than ever: webcam(often with second for IR/facial recognition), array mic across the whole top of the lid rather than just one mic; plus wifi antennas.

 

[Myself]

The article could have explored the obvious, easy solution:
Run Linux.

I‘ve been a windows user for most of my life. But windows has gotten so bad, and Linux so easy with the latest debian releases, the only reason I still put up with windows on some of my machines is native directx.

Same. And at this point, thanks to Steam and Vulcan, my older Linux machines run games better than my older Windows machines.

I'm sure there's a way to wrangle all those compatibility layers myself, but I've been unsuccessful every time I've tried. The way Steam does it, it's painless and transparent and tuned by someone who knows what they're doing. It's great.

Now if only I could get Autodesk to put Fusion 360 on Steam... it's the only thing keeping my desktop on Windows.

 

[jhodge]

I did this for a while, but the need to do a full reinstall for a feature upgrade soured me on it. Kinda like running a Hackintosh, it’s neat that it works, but just a bit more effort than it’s worth, especially when Win 10 still has another year of life in it.

 

[Bad Monkey!]

You can certainly run Windows 11 on very old machines, but my question is, how exactly do you use them?

I have an eight-year-old Core i5 6200U laptop with 16 gigs of RAM that's a lot faster than the systems you're using, and it's a literal pain to use to browse the web. That's of course with uBlock Origin installed and enabled both in Firefox and Chrome. It's just so slow.

Secondly if your system is old enough, it may not necessarily support hardware H.264 decoding at which point watching anything on YouTube/Vimeo/etc. becomes nearly impossible.

And 1440p and above just becomes unattainable because VP9 is a quite heavy codec.

I'm all for keeping older devices whenever possible to reduce the amount of e-waste but not to the point of throwing tantrums because of how slow everything is.

There's something wrong with your machine or setup then, because h.264 is trivial for Sandy Bridge or later CPUs to decode in software, even disregarding Quick Sync. A Haswell CPU can decode HD AV1 streams with a fraction of a core. My Surface Pro 4 with a dual-core hyperthreaded 6th-gen CPU is still perfectly usable for web browsing, including YouTube.

 

[antibolo]

My 2018 MacMini has a Win11 supported processor (and enough performance, given it has 6 cores) but no TPM.

Bummer.

I'll stick with Win10 + ESU for my windows needs for the time being, and will re-evaluate in 2028.

Edit: 2018->2028

FYI, no Intel Macs have TPM, or at least not in the sense that Windows 11 expects (Apple went with their own T1/T2 solution for onboard encryption).

 

[Doctacosa]

Loving these informative Windows 11 articles.

I’ve got one PC that runs my Plex server that I need to figure out what to do with.

It’s more than adequate for Plex and I have zero desire to upgrade its hardware.

Y'know, I was thinking that this article was nice reading while not being super relevant to me...

... but you're right, the Plex server in my closet is running Windows 10 and I have zero needs to update its hardware either. You might have just added a weekend project to my list! Despite some of the complaining people, I like Windows 11 overall.

 

[williamyf]

The article could have explored the obvious, easy solution:
Run Linux.

I‘ve been a windows user for most of my life. But windows has gotten so bad, and Linux so easy with the latest debian releases, the only reason I still put up with windows on some of my machines is native directx.

While most sw has "linux alternatives" often times you are forced to use windows only sw, or the alternatives do not cut mustard.

let me give you my example. In the late '00s and early '10s, the technical manuals for ericsson, nokia-siemens-networksand huawei equipment was contained within Windows-only software (hedex in the case of huawei). At that time I was teaching in a university (2009-2015) and freelancing as technical trainer for huawei and nokia (2012-2016). For the university material I made myself, LibreOffice was more than enough, and I did everthing on it until ~2013 ¿why you ask?. Because, for the freelance work:

powerpoints huawei/nokia sent me that I needed to edit (say, translate to spanish, edit or augment ) would not render properly in LO, and I was not paid to correct formating.

excel with macros that Huawei/nokia sent me (for expense reports, or student attendance and grading) did not work in LO. I was not paid to correct them, and even if I corrected them, if they rendered improperly OR I made a mistake, the responsability would be mine. No thanks.

word docuemnts that nokia/huawei sent to me that I needed to edit (say, exams, or expanded documentation) did not render correctly in LO. If said documents also needed to be editable bythe students, most (really ALL) of them were provided word by their employers.

visio was, and still is, better than the linux alternatives (like yed)

all the parties involved used project...

so, for me, word, excel and powerpoint on mac it was, so, I ditched LO as redundant....

with a bootcamp partition for gaming. My hypervisor accesed the bootcamp partition for easy accsess to visio, project, hedex et al.

I guess I am not the only one in a similar situation.

Linux is cool and all, I started using it in 1996 for my thesis, and on TELCO servers in 2002, but is no panacea.

 

[mmiller7]

The secure-boot requirement is especially bizarre given Windows updates doesn't seem to care if its a machine with secure-boot disabled (my dual-booting Linux laptop at home is insisting on installing/upgrading Windows 11 when I have to boot Windows to update docking station firmware for example)

 

[mmiller7]

While most sw has "linux alternatives" often times you are forced to use windows only sw, or the alternatives do not cut mustard.

let me give you my example. In the late '00s and early '10s, the technical manuals for ericsson, nokia-siemens-networksand huawei equipment was contained within Windows-only software (hedex in the case of huawei). At that time I was teaching in a university (2009-2015) and freelancing as technical trainer for huawei and nokia (2012-2016). For the university material I made myself, LibreOffice was more than enough, and I did everthing on it until ~2013 ¿why you ask?. Because, for the freelance work:

powerpoints huawei/nokia sent me that I needed to edit (say, translate to spanish, edit or augment ) would not render properly in LO, and I was not paid to correct formating.

excel with macros that Huawei/nokia sent me (for expense reports, or student attendance and grading) did not work in LO. I was not paid to correct them, and even if I corrected them, if they rendered improperly OR I made a mistake, the responsability would be mine. No thanks.

word docuemnts that nokia/huawei sent to me that I needed to edit (say, exams, or expanded documentation) did not render correctly in LO. If said documents also needed to be editable bythe students, most (really ALL) of them were provided word by their employers.

visio was, and still is, better than the linux alternatives (like yed)

all the parties involved used project...

so, for me, word, excel and powerpoint on mac it was, so, I ditched LO as redundant....

with a bootcamp partition for gaming. My hypervisor accesed the bootcamp partition for easy accsess to visio, project, hedex et al.

I guess I am not the only one in a similar situation.

Linux is cool and all, I started using it in 1996 for my thesis, and on TELCO servers in 2002, but is no panacea.

Its become a LOT better but still there are edge cases.

I use Linux Mint at home and Codeweavers Crossover (basically paid WINE with support) seems to make a lot of popular things a lot easier to turnkey work (I use MS Office 2010 still at home when I need office-stuff) but it is not a flawless experience with minor annoyances like a right-click submenu that vanishes after 3-ish seconds or random powerpoint display issues not showing embedded image colors properly. It is generally fine for my needs though. When it gets really rough is specialty stuff like 2-way radio programming software that wants to validate a USB device ID to prove you're using "their" serial cable almost like a hardware security token and then flips out saying the cable is not genuine because of the intermediate compatibility layers. VMs help there.