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I have a 5 years old computer with an Intel I5-6600k CPU which is too old for upgrading to Windows 11. All other W11 requirements are met (TMP2.0 ...). I read that one can install and run W11 with this regedit entry:

Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup
Name: AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1

It was said that the system might not run, and certain W11 update won't work. Has anybody tried it and can report on his experiences?

musbach
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  • Check the readily available Windows 11 documentation. The PC above will not run Windows 11 – John Oct 10 '21 at 12:37
  • It’s unsupported by Microsoft. It’s entirely up to you if you want to install Windows 11 on your device – Ramhound Oct 10 '21 at 17:08
  • It is also unsupported to overclock a CPU and I did it without problems for years. The alternative is to buy a new board and CPU. So I ask the brave to share their experiences. – musbach Oct 11 '21 at 07:38
  • It's quite simple. You can upgrade, but the performance may be really bad. We tried it at work with different computers and some are working normaly, other computers are much less performant. Additionally no one can say what microsoft will do with these unsupported versions update wise. Maybe they get just the security updates or you'll have to reinstall windows anytime you want to update it. – CentrixDE Oct 14 '21 at 13:36

2 Answers2

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I've just upgraded my Gen6 i7-6700 Desktop (with TMP 2.0) to Windows 11 using the AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU workaround and it's been working perfectly well so far, still a fast, performant machine.

I upgraded in-place by downloading Win11 ISO, mounting it (with right click) and running setup.exe.

If I ever see Windows 11 updates stop flowing, I will consider upgrading or replacing this aging hardware, but otherwise I don't see a good reason for that.

noseratio
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  • Thanks, did you upgrade from W10 Home or Pro? If Pro, are you now on Home? – musbach Oct 11 '21 at 08:05
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    @musbach From Win 10 Pro ⟶ Win11 Pro. I upgraded in-place by downloading [Win11 Pro ISO](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11), mounting it (with right click) and running `setup.exe`. – noseratio Oct 11 '21 at 10:17
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    @musbach - Home vs Professional does not matter. Windows 10 Home would upgrade to Windows 11 Home while Windows 10 Professional would upgrade to Windows 11 Professional – Ramhound Oct 14 '21 at 12:05
  • @Ramhound you're right. I was under impression I had to choose the ISO image type, but I just checked and apparently I only had to choose the language. – noseratio Oct 14 '21 at 13:33
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    @noseratio - Windows 10 Professional and Home ISO have been combined since November 2015. There is a conman’s to list which editions are contained within ISO, irrelevant, to this question or answer of course. I fully intend to use this question as a duplicate to any questions about Windows 11 on unsupported configurations. This answer is good since it’s short and to the point, and confirms, the key works – Ramhound Oct 14 '21 at 13:46
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Microsoft advises against this method (of course):

Microsoft Windows 11 Upgrade

The Verge says the modification might work, but

"Just know that Microsoft reserves the right to withhold security updates if you go this route"

Lack of security updates may result in your system being compromised with malware.

Verge implementation of Mod

John
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  • Use an alternative AV? – Moab Oct 11 '21 at 01:53
  • Generally Windows Defender is very good at this point. There are also other good AV products out there. – John Oct 11 '21 at 01:56
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    @Moab - Strictly speaking, I am not sure Microsoft literally said that would happen, they just said it was unsupported. I don't trust these news articles since the majority of their author typically makes money on "Microsoft did something stupid" article titles. I have heard people have installed the version released on Oct 5 on unsupported hardware and they still received updates this week. – Ramhound Oct 14 '21 at 12:40
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    @Ramhound, I can confirm I've just got [KB5006674](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/october-12-2021-kb5006674-os-build-22000-258-32255bb8-6b25-4265-934c-74fdb25f4d35), a cumulative Windows 11 update. – noseratio Oct 14 '21 at 22:25
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    @noseratio - Your experience is matching what I am hearing in the larger Window's community – Ramhound Oct 14 '21 at 22:26
  • @Ramhound I think the security update risk will mainly comes from hardware that are not TPM compliant. If this issue is only the fact that Windows didn't list the CPU, the risk would rather be slower speed for that CPU and/or higher kernel crashes. – Togh Dec 05 '21 at 09:47
  • @Togh - Except today there are no Windows security feature that absolutely require TPM other than BitLocker – Ramhound Dec 05 '21 at 17:23
  • @Ramhound If one day such feature is added, then it may block further updates. So up to now there are no issues, but maybe (maybe not, who knows?) later this feature requirement could stop the update process. – Togh Dec 06 '21 at 19:08
  • @Togh - Why exactly was your original comment directed towards me instead anyone else? Your comment had little to do with my comment indicating, it does not appear that cumulative updates are being blocked, on systems where Windows 11 is not official supported due to the processor and/or TPM requirement. *I could careless about security features that don't exist today.* – Ramhound Dec 06 '21 at 19:12