Hey everyone, welcome back to How To Kevin.
In today’s video, I’m going to show you how to install Windows 11 on an older computer,
or at least I’m going to show you how I did it on my old PC from 2008.
There’s other videos out there on how to do this, but I’ll show you how I did it
with easy-to-follow steps that worked for me, and doesn’t require you to make any
changes in the registry yourself.
As like most things I do on this channel, I don’t claim to be an expert on what I’m
going to show you, but I like learning and figuring out how to do all kinds of DIY projects
for myself, so if that’s you and you end up finding this video helpful, please consider
subscribing to the channel and helping it grow, after all subscribing is free and it’ll
help me to know to make more videos on topics like this one.
Okay, let’s get into this.
Just a couple of upfront statements.
Like many computers out there, the PC I’m using here, which is an old Dell Studio 540,
is not supported by Microsoft for Windows 11.
Which means that if something bad happens, Microsoft takes no responsibility.
Because this is a 14 year old computer that initially came with Windows Vista, and is
not my main computer, I wasn’t worried about any potential problems which is why I decided
to try this out and show you how it went.
This computer does not meet the CPU, TPM 2.0, or Secure Boot requirements that Microsoft
says it needs to work.
There are some other ways to install Windows 11, but because of the Secure Boot Requirement,
which my PC doesn’t meet, mostly because I have a Legacy BiOS, this method I’m showing
you is the easiest way.
While this installation worked flawlessly for me and I’ll show you all the steps I
took, just keep in mind that Microsoft does not recommend you installing Windows 11 on
unsupported hardware, so if you decide to do this, you have to be willing to accept
the risk.
And definitely back up your files before you would even think about doing this; let me
repeat this, I would hate for anyone to lose their files so definitely back up your computer
before choosing to attempt this.
And secondly, while I’m showing you how I can install Windows 11 on an old computer,
there are limits on how old that PC’s hardware is.
You do need to have a 64 bit system, Windows 11 does not run on a 32 bit system.
And also Microsoft says you need at least 4 Gigs of RAM with a processor of 2 or more
cores and a clock speed of 1 GHz or faster.
And a hard drive size of at least 64 Gigabytes of free space.
Got it?
Okay, let’s get started.
The first thing I did was go to the microsoft windows 11 download page, I’ll post the
link for you in the description so you don’t have to go searching for it.
You’ll scroll down the page to the Download Windows 11 Disk Image option and click there.
You’ll see a warning about installing windows 11 on an unsupported PC, so again, just make
sure you’re comfortable with this before proceeding.
Then you will click on the Download button, which will open a new option to select your
language, which you can then confirm.
And then you can click on the 64 bit download button that shows up to begin your download.
Jumping ahead, you can see I have the Image file downloaded.
At this point make sure you have your USB flash drive or thumb drive inserted; the drive
needs to hold at least 8 Gigabytes.
We’re doing this because we need to have a bootable Windows 11 drive, where the drive
will install Windows 11 directly to the computer.
Now you may not get this, but in the case you get an error saying that the file is too
large to save to your flash drive, there’s an easy fix; to save time on this video I’m
not going to go over that here, but I just made another video on how to do this; I’ll
link it for you.
It’s a good video if you’ve ever had an issue trying to save larger files to a thumb
drive.
Okay, next we have to go to the Rufus website.
I’ll also have this linked for you in the description.
On this site, I downloaded the latest file.
If you’re like me and were unsure about downloading from this site, I did a lot of
researching and found Rufus to be a reliable and safe site.
But definitely feel free to investigate for yourself.
Once the download completed, I clicked on the file and the drive property box will open,
this will work on the USB drive you have inserted.
There’s a couple of things we have to do here.
First we’ll go to the Boot selection Menu, click and then select the Windows 11 ISO file
we downloaded.
Once we do that, a new box titled Image option becomes available.
Here, we’ll select Extended Windows 11 Installation; this is the option that bypasses the TPM and
Secure Boot requirements which will prevent your unsupported PC from updating to Windows
11 by using Windows Update.
Now because I mentioned my computer is using a traditional Legacy BiOS, I’ll need to
make a change to the partition scheme, switching it from GPT to MBR.
Once I do that, I can hit start.
If your computer is already set to UEFI, so it's not using a traditional Legacy BiOS,
you won’t need to change this….again, I had to do this.
If you’re not sure if you have a Legacy BiOS or the newer Unified Extensible Firmware
Interface, or UEFI, you can find this out by searching or running ‘msinfo32’.
As you can see on the screen, I have ‘Legacy’ Okay so this part took awhile, I speeded it
up here but it took almost 25 minutes for it to get the USB drive ready.
Once that’s done then we can shut down and restart the computer.
As it restarts, to make this computer boot from the drive, I have to press the F12 button
to get the Boot menu; different manufacturers may have a different way to do this, but for
my old Dell, pressing the F12 button got me there.
Once I get there, I use the arrow keys to select the USB drive for it to boot from.
Okay, fast forward again, between all the preparation and installing, it’ll take some
time, definitely give yourself a good 2 hours to do this entire Windows 11 install.
At this page we’ll start prepping the actual install.
After you select the language, on the next screen that pops up, we can select the I don’t
have a product key button.
Next I selected the standard Windows 11 Home Edition.
And then I select the License terms.
Okay so here is where we come to a crossroads.
From the bootable drive, which is what we needed to do because of the Legacy BiOS.
it won’t let you use the upgrade option, so this is why you need to back up your files
because you need to select Custom; and as you see here, it only installs Windows, not
your files and settings.
Since this was an old computer, I actually wanted a clean install so this was not a problem
for me.
After I select the install option, I select where on the hard drive I want to install
it, which of course is the partition with the most memory.
And then I speed up the video again because it takes a long time.
But as you can see, Windows 11 installed successfully on my old 2008 Dell Studio 540.
And it’s worked fine.
It also has received the latest Windows Updates without any issues, which I mention, because
Microsoft doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get updates.
That could change at some point, but right now it’s working.
And because I did a fresh install, this computer seems to be running better than it ever did.
So what do you think?
Have you or are thinking about trying this?
If so, please let me know in the comments.
I hope you found the video helpful and if you did, please like it… and if you enjoy
doing a variety of diy projects definitely consider subscribing, I’d love to have you
onboard.
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Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.