Install Windows 11 on Unsupported Hardware

in today's demo we're taking another look at installing Windows 11 on unsupported Hardware when Windows 11 was released it had much stricter minimum Hardware requirements than Windows 10 which means a lot of people who have computers that are more than capable of running Windows 10 are not able to install Windows 11. fortunately there's a few workarounds which allow you to install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware and one of those workarounds is Rufus which is a software application that allows you to create bootable USB media from ISO files but more specifically it can modify your windows 11 installation media so that you can bypass the hardware Jacks and install Windows 11. it also has some additional features like the ability to automatically create and use a local user account instead of a Microsoft online account and it will also automate the out-of-box setup wizard so that you don't need to answer any of those setup questions which makes for a much more streamlined installation the first release of Windows 11 was version 21 H2 which means it was released in the second half of 2021. since then there's been several updates including a major version update to 22 H2 and in June of 2023 Microsoft updated the installation media to 22 H2 version 2. this version 2 is basically Windows 11 22 H2 with all the latest updates included in the ISO file up to June 2023. Rufus has also had several updates since its version 3.19 introduced support for modifying Windows 11 installation media so today's demo is to revisit Rufus and windows 11 using the latest versions available as of June 2023 and see if it all still works we'll also look at whether the Windows update facility will work if you're using unsupported Hardware so stick around to the end to see that I've downloaded and installed the PC Health checkout from Microsoft to check whether this PC meets the minimum requirements I'll click on check now to see the results and we can see that this machine fails because it doesn't have a TPM version 2 chip also doesn't have a supported CPU we can click on see all results to check the other requirements which this PC does actually pass this PC was good enough to run Windows 10 and so it should be good enough to run Windows 11. if we're going to Windows settings then update and security it also tells me here that the PC doesn't support Windows 11 and as such it won't offer the free upgrade so we can't do an In-Place upgrade and we'll get a similar message if we're trying to do a clean install so let's go ahead and use Rufus to create our installation media which will allow us to bypass these Hardware checks you'll need a USB flash drive with at least eight gigabytes of capacity and a copy of the windows 11 22 H2 ISO file which as I mentioned earlier Microsoft has updated the latest ISO file to version 2 which includes all previous updates up to June 2023 you can download the iso directly from Microsoft for free but another cool feature of Rufus is that it can also download the ISO file for you so let's browse to rufus.ie scroll down to the download section which will then show you the latest version of the app you can see here that there is a standard version and also a portable version a portable version is where you can download and run the app directly it doesn't need to be installed The Standard Version used to be a version that you would install to your PC like any other application but now it seems that the Standard Version and the portable version are exactly the same I'll download the 64-bit version to my downloads folder we need to insert a USB flash drive into the PC and then double click on the file to launch the app when you run it for the first time you'll be prompted to allow Rufus to check for updates you should choose yes for this and I'll explain why in a second once you're in the app click on select and browse to your windows 11 ISO file that you've either previously downloaded or alternatively you can click on the arrow and change it to a download button if there is no arrow and you don't see a download button then it means you didn't choose yes to allow the app to check for updates for some reason if you choose not to check for updates then it doesn't present the download option I have no idea why that is but to resolve it you can click on the application settings button and then re-enable the check for updates you'll need to close and relaunch the app for the changes to Tech effect let's click on download and you'll see a small drop down list of options to choose from one of which is Windows 11. let's choose that and click on continue we then need to select a release at the time of this recording there was only one to choose from which is 22h2 version 2. so I'll choose that and click on continue we then need to choose an Edition and again at the time of the recording there was only one option to choose from so I'll choose that and click on continue next we can select the language that we'd like to use in Windows 11 so select the one you want and click on continue and we can ignore the architecture option as Windows 11 is only available in 64-bit so that's the only option we can then go ahead and click on download to download the ISO file to your PC which will take a few minutes depending on the speed of your internet connection once the download is finished or you've selected a previously downloaded ISO you should be able to leave all the options on my default settings and then click on start you then get this screen where you can choose your customizations we can tell Rufus to remove the requirement for 4 gig of RAM secure Boot and the tpm2 chip we can remove the requirement to use a Microsoft online account we can tell it to create a local user account it will default to the same name as what you're currently logged in with but you can also amend it here to something else if you prefer we can set the regional settings to the same as the computer that you're on at the moment which means that the setup wizard will not stop and prompt for those settings during installation and the same with the numerous privacy questions you would normally be asked during assessment wizard you can choose to skip these questions and Rufus will automatically set the answers to no for you I'm not sure what this last option does it offers to disable BitLocker automatic device encryption and for anyone who doesn't know BitLocker is Microsoft's encryption software which allows you to encrypt the hard disk or SSD for security purposes but this option is not normally turned on by default in Windows anyway so I think we can safely ignore this option if anyone knows exactly what this does please let me know in the comment comments once you've chosen your options click on OK you'll then get a warning message advising you that any existing data on your flash drive will be destroyed hopefully you already knew that but if not you might want to back up any data on that flash drive before continuing once you're happy to continue click on OK and Rufus will begin creating your installation media sit back and relax while this finishes as it can take a little while to complete once it's done click on close and you'll then have a USB disk containing Windows 11 installation media which will now let you install Windows 11 on unsupported Hardware if you want to upgrade your existing Windows 10 to Windows 11 and keep all of your settings data and applications then double click on the setup application to start the In-Place upgrade I'll cover this later in the demo but for now I want to do a clean install of Windows 11 on this PC I'll restart this PC and boot from the USB disk I'll select my USB disk from the boot list and then boot into the Windows setup program fun facts this window setup program which debuted in Windows Vista is codenamed Panther okay select your language time and keyboard settings and click next then click on install now accept the license agreement and click next for a clean install we need to choose customized I see all the partitions from my Windows 10 installation so I'll delete each one in turn until it just shows unallocated space then I'll click next when I was 11 will then be installed and the PC will restart automatically into the out of box Setup Wizard when Windows boots for the first time you would normally be prompted to answer several questions during the out of box Setup Wizard but when you use Rufus to modify the installation media it effectively makes the setup unattended so you won't be prompted to answer any questions it will boot straight to the desktop okay that's Windows 11 now installed let's go ahead and check Windows update and see if Microsoft will let me download updates for this unsupported PC so the update seems to be downloaded okay I'll skip ahead just for the purposes of the video all the updates have been installed and it tells me that a restart is required so that looks like Windows update is working as normal but how do I know if I'm getting all updates and Microsoft isn't blocking any and not telling me well I've created a virtual machine which has a specification that meets the hardware requirements and I've installed Windows 11 using an unmodified ISO file from Microsoft let's run Windows update and see if it receives the same updates as my unsupported PC while those updates are downloading I'll install the Windows PC health check tool to show that the PC passes the hardware requirements so this is just a comparison of Windows update on a supported PC against an unsupported PC as you can see the supported PC gets the same updates as the unsupported PC which can approves that Microsoft doesn't block updates if you run it on unsupported Hardware but what about later this year when Microsoft releases Windows 11 23 H2 or 24 H2 the year after will Windows update offer the upgrade the answer is no it won't but that doesn't mean you won't be able to upgrade you won't be offered the upgrade automatically from Windows update because the PC still doesn't meet the hardware requirements you'll need to download the 23 H2 ISO file either from Microsoft or by using the Rufus tool and just use Rufus to recreate your installation media using the 2382 ISO file then you can do an In-Place upgrade where you install Windows 11 over the top of your existing install of Windows 11 and it'll keep all of your settings data and software intact it's essentially the same as upgrading via Windows update we're just using Rufus to bypass the hardware checks I'll quickly demonstrate an In-Place upgrade but as 23 H2 has not yet been released at the time of this demo I'll need to upgrade 21 H2 to 22 H2 but the same process will apply when upgrading from 22 H2 to 23 H2 when it becomes available so here I am on a PC running Windows 11 21 H2 and the PC doesn't meet the minimum Hardware requirements I've got a few applications installed and I've got a few documents on the desktop I've already installed all of the available Windows updates so we're completely up to date but as you can see it's not offering me the latest version which is currently 22 H2 so I've already downloaded a 22h2 ISO file and use roofers to create new installation media on a USB flash drive I'll open File Explorer and double click on the setup application from my Rufus USB installation media I'll click next to install Windows 11. the setup program will check for updates I'll accept the license agreement it will check for some more updates and on this screen I'll keep the default options to install Windows 11 Pro and keep personal files and apps I'll then go ahead and click on install and windows 11 will then be installed without much more intervention we will need to answer a few questions during the first boot but then you'll go right to the desktop we can run the winville command to confirm the version of Windows that's installed so we can see this version has now been upgraded to 22 H2 it can follow the same steps to upgrade to 23h2 when it becomes available alright that's it for this demo hit the like button if you found it useful and subscribe for more content like this and I'll catch you in the next one bye for now

Channel: Click Next Demos

Views: 138,137

Keywords: Windows 11, Rufus, 22H2, Upgrade, Clean Install, Windows

Id: xCPZc2rZ4oY

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 06 2023