Install Windows 11 without a TPM 2.0 or on some older CPUs.
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom here for
Askleo.com.
Windows 11 certainly has arrived with its share of controversy.
It's been around for a couple of years now, but understand that when it first
came out, these new hardware requirements had a lot of people
basically annoyed, thinking that there was some vast
conspiracy to sell more PCs, which by the way, there is not.
But the bottom line is that some machines, some older machines might not be able
to run Windows 11 because of these two specific requirements,
TPM 2.0 and certain families or classes of CPUs that were too old.
However, we might still be able to do it.
As it turns out, there is
documentation from Microsoft, no less,
that will allow us to set a registry key that will cause the Windows 11 setup
process to bypass both of those two requirements.
Now, you'll still need to meet all
the other requirements, whatever those might be.
The one that I think would worry most
people is that a TPM still needs to be present.
It's the 2.0 requirement that we're sidestepping.
The TPM may not be visible on your machine
because on many machines it's a BIOS or U EFI setting that needs to be altered.
Can't tell you what to do about that.
But as soon as you're able to figure that out with your computer manufacturer,
as soon as the TPM becomes visible and available,
it won't matter then if it's 1.2, we'll still be able to install it.
Now, as you might imagine, there are risks.
The first one is that we're about to go partying in the registry.
It's not a huge modification, but still,
we're going to be partying in the registry.
Back up first.
And by that, I mean a full system image backup of your system.
That way, if something should go wrong, a typo here, a miss click there,
and your machine becomes unbootable, which is actually the worst case scenario
that can in fact happen when you're playing in the registry,
then you can always revert or restore to that backup image.
So do that first.
I am going to insist and assume that you have done so.
Now, the other risk, of course,
is that once you've got Windows 11 successfully installed, well, to be fair,
those requirements were there for a reason.
There may be things in Windows 11 that won't work or won't work as expected
because some of the requirements were not met.
Can't tell you what those are,
can't tell you what those will be tomorrow or today because those are the kinds
of things that I expect will change over time.
But just be warned that
when you finally get to Windows 11, there is a chance, currently a very small
chance, that things won't work out as expected.
Again, our solution for this,
our safety net for this is the backup image that I insist you create before you
do this, because that, again, is what you'll be able to restore or two
should you decide that Windows 11 just isn't cutting it for you.
And of course, number three, Microsoft,
with the documentation for this, has, of course, a dire warning.
They really don't want you to do this, but they've provided it anyway.
There's at least one theory as to why, and I'll explain that in a minute.
But the warning, and I'll read it to you, if you proceed with installing Windows 11,
your PC will no longer be supported and won't be entitled to receive updates.
Damages to your PC due to lack
of compatibility aren't covered under the manufacturer warranty.
Sounds pretty dire.
In fact, if you read it literally,
it seems like you're not going to be getting updates anymore.
I don't believe that's true.
I believe that you will continue to get updates to Windows.
The issue is that if anything goes wrong,
anything at all, whether it's related to this or not, you're on your own.
Essentially, you've voided the warranty by installing Windows 11 on a machine
that is supposedly, according to Microsoft, not compatible.
So what's it all about?
It's a registry key.
Literally, one registry key.
Let me show you where and what.
Okay, here we are in Windows 10.
Click on the Start button and start typing Registry.
In this case, it comes up right away with Registry Editor.
That's what we're going to run.
You do need administrative privileges
to make changes to your registry, so we're going to do that.
We're going to allow that.
Now, the magic is simply this.
In H key local machine, system, set up, we now need to add a key.
We'll right click on set up and say New Key.
That key's name will be MoS etup.
Note the capitalization, capital M, lowercase o, uppercase sm, Setup.
Hit Enter.
Now within MoS etup, we're going to create a new key value, New.
This will be a D word, a 32 bit value.
The name of this one, and it's a long one,
is allow upgrades
with unsupported TPM or CPU.
Hopefully, I got that type correctly. I did not.
I'm going to have to update that.
And don't worry, you'll either be able to copy paste this from the article
that I'll be pointing you at, or the article will also include a very
nifty shortcut that will make this even easier.
But for the moment, we've created a new value allow upgrades
without unsupported or allow upgrades with unsupported TPM or CPU.
Exactly what we want.
The other thing we need to do, of course, is change the value.
So if I double click on it and change the value from zero to one.
Honestly, that's it.
In theory, when you now run Windows 11 Setup,
it'll simply not check for your TPM or CPU.
Now, I mentioned that this re's an easier way that I was going to provide for you.
So what I want you to do is go visit the companion article for this video.
It's
Askleo.com/158756.
I'll bring it up right now.
You can see that it goes through a lot of the issues we've been talking about.
So fourth throws words at you and basically describes
in probably more detail what I've been describing to you so far.
However, if you take a look down here in the Registry Modification section,
it shows you, yes, what the key is that you wanted to add and so forth.
However, ultimately, you can download and run this.
Reg file.
Reg file are registry files that contain
information to be loaded into the registry.
I'm going to right click on that, save the link to my downloads folder,
and you can see it's actually called allow upgrades with unsupported TPM or CPU.
Reg. We'll save it and we will open the file.
We definitely get warnings along this path
because we're about to run a registry file.
We're about to change the registry
on the system and it's definitely going to want
to confirm that that's exactly what you want to do.
Hit yes.
Again, we're allowing the registry editor to make changes.
Does require administrative privileges, hence user account control.
Boom.
Adding registry can unintentionally blah, blah, blah.
Again, yet another warning.
This is appropriate for registry
modifications, especially if you don't know where they're coming from.
We'll say yes. Boom.
We just made the change.
Without typing a thing, we just added this key to the registry.
And if you care to look, you can actually look at the.
Reg file in a text editor.
What you'll see is essentially this,
a few lines with the information that we've just been talking about here,
identifying itself as the registry editor, but then exactly which key is getting
createdand which value is getting put there.
That's simple. Double click on the.
Reg file that you've downloaded,
if you've already downloaded it, and it'll just load it into the registry.
Now, you'll see also on that page a big fat disclaimer.
You're using this registry file at your own risk.
I have to do that to protect myself.
Make sure when you download it, open it up in Notepad.
Make sure it has what it says it's going to have.
Make sure it has the information about the registry key that it's going to modify.
But again, using this at your own risk, you've already taken back shops,
double click on that file, and it'll basically set the registry key for you.
And again, in theory, Windows Setup or Windows 11 should let you go.
And again, for updates, for comments,
for related links, for the registry file and more, visit
Askleo.com/158756.
I'm Leo Notenboom and this is Askleo.com.
Thanks for watching.