Hi everyone and welcome to
another video on Windows 11. As you might have heard, since a few days, Microsoft has released their 2023 update
of Windows 11. Better known as 23H2. As I did some earlier videos on getting
Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, this one is no different and covers upgrading
to Windows 11 23H2 on non-supported hardware. There are several scenarios
that might apply for you, so I decided to split these up in separate videos. This video is about upgrading an existing Windows
11 installation that is on the previous version, 22H2 or 21H2, already and I will explain how
to upgrade that to the latest version: 23H2. Other videos will be about performing
a fresh install of Windows 11 23H2 on unsupported hardware or about
upgrading from Windows 10. For these different scenarios, I've put a card here and you can find
a link in the description as well. Since Microsoft released
Windows 11 in October 2021, there has been some hardware limitations.
These limitations include a limited list of processor support, the requirement
for secure boot and a TPM 2.0 module. In case one of these requirements on your
machine is not met, you have an unsupported system and without any workarounds, you will not
be able to install Windows 11 on that machine. Since this video is about upgrading from
an existing Windows 11 installation on unsupported hardware, you are most likely fully
aware of that, as it means you have used one of the known methods to work around these
limitations or hardware checks in the past. For this video I will use my trusty Dell
Optiplex 9020 which I also used for previous videos on Windows 11. It is equipped with
a fourth generation Intel Core i5 CPU, which is not supported, and it doesn't
meet the TPM 2.0 requirement either. So in short: this machine is not officially
compatible or qualified to run Windows 11 by Microsoft, but currently it is
running the 22H2 version of that OS. So far minor feature and also security
updates seem to come in just fine through Windows Update on unsupported hardware.
Last year, with the the release of 22H2, an unsupported system would not automatically
update to that new version. This time, for 23H2, the situation is a bit different. While for
the previous version the new features came in a single, large, update package which
was not seen on unsupported machines. This time the updates are offered through a
few separate update packages in Windows Update, with KB5031455 as being one of the more important
ones. It looks like this package is offered on an unsupported system and it does enable all the
features that are in 23H2, at least for now. What does not get offered to unsupported
systems is the 23H2 enablement package, called KB5027397. This is a very small update that
moves the version of the operating system to 23H2. Fortunately it can just be
downloaded and installed manually on an unsupported system
to bring that one fully to 23H2. On a supported system this is how that
would look like in Windows update. So in short: you should get the required
updates automatically and once everything is up to date you can manually install that enablement
package to fully move your installation to 23H2. I'll go through these steps in a bit
but in case that wouldn't work for you, I also have a second method, which
you can find further in this video, that should work for any system that's
already on Windows 11 even if it's still on 21H2 or in case you experience issues with
installing the updates that I just mentioned. Let's start with the first and
easiest method: using Windows Update. So in Settings > System > About on my system you
can see here the machine that I will be using for this video is, as I mentioned, on Windows
11 22H2. We can also see that some of the new features are not available yet, like the option
to never hide labels or combine on the taskbar. From here, all that we need to do
first is to go to Windows Update and check for updates. Then let
Windows install all of the updates. We're looking specifically for the update
that I mentioned and is called KB5031455. I did notice that in some cases,
the update which we need to get, is installed automatically, without the need for
further confirmation. Like is the case here. But in other cases you need to click "Download
and install" on a banner like this one. Not sure why the different
exists but that's how it is. Once the update is installed, we need
to restart the system as is suggested and then wait for the update to complete. After the reboot, we can see that our
version is still on 22H2 in System > About. If we check again for updates in Windows Update, we can see that everything that
was available is installed. If we go to update history, we can verify
that that important KB5031455 is present. That also means that now all new features, despite the version still being
listed as 22H2, are already available. So if you go to Taskbar Settings > Taskbar
Behaviors, now we do have that never combine option here. Also in File Explorer, as
you can see, the new interface is active. The next step now, as mentioned, is
to install the 23H2 enablement update. I've put a link to download that in the description here and you
can also find it on my blog. As you can see this is a pretty small file. Once downloaded just to run the executable
and restart the system once again when asked. And after the reboot, if we go
to Settings > System > About, we can see that we are fully on 23H2 now. "wiver" is telling us exactly the same. Hopefully these steps will help you to upgrade
completely to 23H2 on your unsupported hardware. Now as I mentioned in the beginning, if this does not work for you or you are
still on 21H2, you can use another method. The way that we will do this, is by downloading
the windows 11 ISO from Microsoft's website, copy the contents to our SSD and modify a
single file, which is responsible for the hardware checks. This will allow us to continue
and upgrade while bypassing the hardware check. So let's start our browser and and head over
to Microsoft's Windows 11 download page. You have several options here and earlier,
for 22H2, I recommended here to continue by downloading the Media Creation Tool
and then use that to download ISO. For Windows 11 23H2, I noticed that if you
use an ISO that is generated with that tool, it would only upgrade to 22H2 somehow. So instead we need to download
the ISO directly from here. Select the only option in the download
Windows 11 disk image section: Windows 11 multi Edition ISO,
from the list and click download. Now comes a tricky part: we need to select the
correct language for the ISO and that's more important than you might think as it has to match
with the base-install language of your current installation. That doesn't mean it necessarily
matches with the current display language. In order to double check this, we need to
launch a command prompt as administrator. To do so, press the Windows key
or Start button and type cmd. This should select the command prompt and
then here, click on "Run as administrator". Here we can type the command: "dism
/online /get-intl" and press enter. In the output you get here, you
should find the base language of your Windows installation. In my
case it is English - United States, so that is also the language that
I need to select for the download. After selecting that, we can click on Confirm and
wait for the 64-bit download button to appear. Then click on it to start
downloading the ISO file. Our download completed, so
we can close our browser and navigate to the downloads folder to continue. Now we need to mount that
downloaded ISO file. This can simply be done by double clicking on the file. As you can see this results in an additional
virtual drive with the contents of the ISO. In case double clicking wouldn't work, you can
also right click on the ISO and choose for mount. On that mounted ISO we have the required
files right here but these are read-only. Since we need to modify that file
to bypass the hardware checks, we need to copy the contents of the
ISO to a new folder on the desktop. Let me first create that folder. I'll call it 23H2 And then we can simply drag the contents
of the mounted ISO to that new folder. After all files are copied, you can unmount the ISO file by right clicking on the
virtual drive and choosing Eject. If you would be low on space, at this point
you can also delete the downloaded ISO from your Downloads folder because from here we
will only work with that copy on the desktop. If you would try to run the installation
without any modifications at this point, this is what you would see. You can see that that setup application
is running the "Checking your PC"-step for some time and then it tells us that our
hardware is not compatible, as we already knew. To work around that, navigate to the
sources folder in the copy of the files on the desktop. Here, find a file
called appraiserres.dll. Right click on it and then choose "Open with..."
and choose notepad from the list. This brings up the binary contents of the file. We don't need to read it, just select
everything by pressing Ctrl+A or go to Edit > Select all and press
the backspace or delete button to delete everything in there. Then
just save the file and quit notepad. That's all it takes... simply as it is,
this will disable the hardware checks. So let's navigate navigate back to that
23H2 folder and run setup from here. On the first screen, click on "Change
how setup downloads updates" and choose for "Not right now". This will prevent the
setup from redownloading that modified file. Now click next and as you could see, the "Checking your PC"-step only takes a very short time
and doesn't complain anymore! Simply because remove the
contents of that .dll file. Click Accept here. And eventually you should end up
with the "Ready to install" screen. This is what you need to get here: install
Windows 11 and keep my personal files and applications. If you do not get the option
to keep your files and apps, something went wrong and in most cases this is due to the
earlier mentioned mismatch with the language. This is how that would look
like, and as you can see, it's also clarified as well
at the bottom of that window. All we need to do now is to click
Install and then be patient. After waiting for roughly 20 minutes in my case, we are greeted with our fresh
Windows 11 23H2 desktop. Let's have a look now at Settings > System > About And, as you can see, we've successfully upgraded
our Windows 11 22H2 install to Windows 11 23H2 and, as with the previous method, "wiver"
shows us the same information off course. At this point you can delete that copy
of the installation files which you made on the desktop as they are no longer
needed and it take up quite some space. If you have kept that downloaded ISO file,
you're safe to delete that one as well. And while going to Downloads in
File Explorer we can see another confirmation of the upgrade as we
got that new File Explorer interface After deleting the ISO we
can also check the options for taskbar behavior by going to taskbar settings. Since 23H2 it allows you again to not hide labels
or combine task buttons. And after aligning the start button to the left as well, this finally
goes back to the way I've always liked it. That was it for the video.
Thanks a lot for watching, let me know how this worked for you
and, if you would have any questions, let me know in the comments and I'll
do my best to provide an answer. If you have liked this video,
a thumbs up is always nice, and if you're into this kind of videos,
feel free to subscribe to my channel. Thanks again and hope to see you back here soon!
