Windows 11 is not supported on my newer PC. What can I do?
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom
here for askleo.com. As I dive right into this question,
it's an interesting one that I'm hearing from time to time.
"Windows 11 just gave my processor a death sentence.
I checked to see if it would meet the requirements of Windows 11.
I got the message the processor did not meet the requirements.
I bought it with Windows Ten Pro 64, and now I can't upgrade my system.
Windows says it will stop supporting Windows 10 in 2025.
So there goes security support.
I do graphic work,
and this is why I bought this workstation, and now it will become a security risk.
There has got to be a lot of other graphic
people out there with this kind of machine.
Are we just SOL?" I hear you.
I do.
In fact, I hear from a lot of people, as I said, with similar similar complaints.
And the issue, of course, is that a machine that they consider to be newer.
Typically, the processor seems to be the sticking point in most of these cases.
Once they're past the TPM issue, they are reporting that it is not
supported by the Windows Eleven compatibility checker,
which can be frustrating, especially as in your case and as in so
many others, you've invested in what you consider to be a fairly high end machine
to do some fairly high end work, only to find out that Windows Eleven
supposedly will not be supported on that machine.
Needless to say, I have thoughts. Thought number one.
Yeah, Microsoft messed up.
They really did. Not to be clear,
all computers are going to be unsupported and obsolete at some point in time.
They just are. This is the nature of the industry.
This is the nature of the technology we're dealing with.
The computers you and I used 20 years ago are kind of pointless right now.
They just don't have what it takes to run modern applications and modern software.
So the issue is a matter of degree.
How long should we consider something to be newish?
And it appears that for some of these things, Microsoft has drawn a fairly
arbitrary, fairly short timeframe for some of these machines.
Now, one of the things that I think is causing a little bit of an overreaction
is that the Windows Ten end of support deadline, which,
as I record this is October 13, 2025, not quite four years from now.
That's a really long time, especially when it comes to technology.
In four years.
It's very possible you may be dealing
with a completely different piece of hardware anyway,
just by the nature of the technology that we use, we upgrade, we use.
If you've had your machine already
for a couple of years, and it sounds like you may have,
then your machine at that point will already be six, seven, eight years old.
That's actually not an unreasonable lifespan for modern technology for PCs.
Yes, we'd love for them to run longer.
We'd love for them to last longer.
But the fact is,
when you take a look at turnover and advancements in technology in general,
that kind of a lifespan isn't really that unreasonable.
But more to the point, it's four years away from now.
That's a really long time.
More to the point, it's too soon to start getting upset.
Now, the other thing that a lot of people
overlook, there are some wonderful cases for people that already realized this.
And you'll see why in a minute Windows Ten is going to keep working.
It just is right.
It's not going to drop dead on October 13, 2025.
It's going to keep running.
Your machine will keep working.
Yes, there will no longer be updates for Windows Ten on your machine.
On one hand, you'll hear from a lot
of people that that's like this horrible security risk, that all of a sudden you're
going to be vulnerable to all sorts of malicious software targeting your
system because you won't be able to update it anymore.
I used to be one of those people.
It was one of those questions that came up over and over again.
Every time an operating system came to its end of support, its end of life
never happened. The disaster never happened.
There are people today running Windows XP,
which has been out of support for I think a decade.
There are people today running
Windows Seven, which has been out of support for several years.
They're running it fine.
They're running it securely.
The issue is that the burden of responsibility shifts somewhat.
The burden of what it means to keep your
system safe shifts a little bit more towards you.
So Microsoft won't be updating Windows past its end of life.
But your security software will continue to be updated for a while,
and you will continue to use your best security and safety practices.
One of those keeping Windows up to date falls away.
But everything else you do to keep
yourself safe not only continues, but just becomes that much more important.
And as I said, there are people today
that are running software that is years out of support and doing so safely.
There's nothing that says you won't be
able to do exactly the same thing with Windows Ten come 2025.
So the other thing, and this is purely speculation on my part.
This is just me taking a look at what Microsoft has done over the past year
with respect to Windows Eleven and in previous years with respect
to other Windows, I can't guarantee that any of this will happen.
It's just me making some Wild ass guesses.
It would not surprise me in the least if the processor requirement
for Windows Eleven were dialed down sometime within the next four years.
Why?
Because we're hearing from people like you
with these processors that are supposedly not supported.
Microsoft hears this, too.
They may not sound like they hear it.
They may not act like they hear it, but it's very possible that they'll hear it.
They're not going to act on it right now, because again, it's not a problem.
Today.
You can continue to run Windows Ten for the next four years safely now,
three years from now, three and a half years from now.
As the deadline approaches,
if Microsoft hears that there remain many, many people, or perhaps more importantly,
many, many corporations and large enterprises that continue to run these
older processors, I think it's pretty likely that they'll
decide or they'll make a decision to release the requirement a little bit.
Relax the requirement a little bit now.
It may not be the case, right?
Corporations may have moved on in that time.
Most people may have moved on in that time.
It may not happen,
but that's where I believe the opportunity lies, where the possibility lies
that large corporations with huge installed bases of machines,
perhaps even not unlike your own, they're not necessarily going to just
randomly upgrade all those machines in that time frame.
They might. But if they don't, Microsoft will almost
certainly pay attention to them and tweak the requirements
either by tweaking the requirements of Windows Eleven so that it will run
on your processor or perhaps extending the service lifespan of Windows Ten.
Again, it's four years from now.
A lot can happen in four years.
And finally, I do have to point out one
thing, and this is something that a lot of people don't realize.
If you take a look at the fine print,
the requirements right now seem to indicate that if your
system doesn't meet the requirement, the CPU or the TPM or something else,
you won't get offered Windows Eleven via Windows Update.
Okay, but you can still try and install it yourself.
And as it turns out, it may very well just work.
In other words, installing it yourself
on hardware that is technically unsupported may in fact, work.
That's really important, and that's really interesting.
So here's what I suggest you try sometime in the next four years, right?
Make an image backup of your machine,
download and install Windows 11, see if it works.
If it does great, you've got a new life
on your computer if it doesn't restore the image backup you took.
So you're back at Windows Ten, you're no worse off.
And you have some hard data that says,
yes, Windows Eleven is or is not working on this machine.
But the bottom line here is that, yes, this really is all about security, right?
What Windows is trying to do.
What Microsoft is trying to do is take advantage of features in newer processors
and the TPM to improve the security of Windows itself.
I think we can all agree that that's not
only valuable, that's something that Windows can actually use.
It needs better security.
But we've got four years to figure this out.
Let's not jump to conclusions before we
really know what's truly going to happen in 2025.
For updates for related links for comments and more, visit
askleo.com/ 138750 I'm Leo Notenboom.
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