So we have some good news for anyone who's been
following the Windows 11 saga,
and specifically anyone who wanted to upgrade to Windows 11
when it comes out,
but realize that their computer,
for one reason or another,
didn't meet the minimum requirements.
For the most part, this had to do with the
generation of the CPU.
For example, with me, I had all the other requirements,
but my CPU was apparently too old.
Seemed kind of arbitrary. However,
the big news is that Microsoft apparently made some statements
to some news outlets specifically like The Verge,
stating that unofficially you will be able to upgrade to
Windows 11 even if you are not on a supported
CPU.
You just have to manually install it using either the
Windows 11 Media Creation Tool or an ISO,
which is not really a big deal.
I mean, that's something you could easily acquire.
So basically anyone who wants to upgrade should be able
to.
It's just you're not going to get an automatic update,
which is something they should have just allowed from the
beginning.
It makes complete sense. If someone understands the supposed risks,
they should be allowed to install it anyway,
and people were trying to figure out how to get
around it anyway,
and now they'll won't have to.
And apparently you won't even have to do a clean
install.
You will be able to do just a regular upgrade
using the ISO or MIDI creation tool from Windows 10
to Windows 11 without having to do a clean install.
Now there's a couple things I should point out.
First of all, this is not going to be official
or advertised by Microsoft in any way.
Just some news articles said they talked to some representatives
who said that the ISO installer will not stop you
from doing this,
but nowhere on Microsoft's website does say that you will
have the ability to do this.
Believe me, looked. So it's going to be really unofficial,
not advertised. You'll just have to know that you can
do it.
However, apparently the ISO file or MIDI creation tool will
still check for other hardware requirements that are stated with
Windows 11,
for example, a minimum of 64 gigabytes of storage and
at least a dual core CPU.
Those aren't a big deal,
but the third one is a TPM chip of some
kind,
and that's the one that a lot of people are
kind of confused about,
because that is one that a lot of people might
not have.
Now, it's still not very clear whether or not the
final Windows 11 version will actually require a TPM chip.
There have been a couple of articles that didn't say
anything about TPM chip in their stated requirements that Microsoft
said,
whereas a couple others either said that yes it will
require
TPM 1.2 or they're not sure but it kind of
lines up that it probably will require at least
TPM 1.2 because the Windows 11 Insider Isos do require
that there's a hardware check.
And also back when Microsoft originally had the compatibility page
for Windows 11,
you might not remember this.
They removed it pretty quickly,
but originally it had two different
floors. They called it for the requirements,
one was a hard floor,
one was a soft floor.
So the soft floor was like the official requirements,
it was TPM 2.0 and a 8th Gen.
Intel or Zen 2 Plus processor from AMD.
So the idea being, even if your computer didn't support
these soft floor requirements,
it could still be installed as long as you had
the hard floor requirements which are
TPM 1.2. It had to have minimum and there was
no CPU generation requirement.
So still, no matter what,
apparently you probably will need
TPM 1.2. This was a requirement even before they took
down that page the Windows 11 Insider required and you
probably will need it for the final version Now.
I made a video relatively recently talking about how your
computer probably actually does have a TPM chip even though
it might not say it when you run the PC
health checker app. A lot of
CPU's that are several years old even have a TPM
module built into the CPU,
but it's not enabled by default in the BIOS.
So I go through in that video how to go
through and look to see if your computer does have
that and which ones probably do,
and also even if your CPU does not,
if you custom build your computer,
and even maybe if you didn't,
a lot of motherboards may actually have a slot where
you can go and buy a TPM chip and actually
plug it into the motherboard,
but you'll have to find out if you can potentially
do that.
I explained that all in the video.
I'll have it pop out,
so definitely check that out if you're not sure if
your computer has ATPM chip or is capable of having
one.
Now, having heard this, you might be wondering,
just like I did. OK,
so if you actually can install Windows 11 on older
CPU's,
why does Microsoft have this arbitrary,
seemingly requirement for certain generations of
CPU's? It's really stupid. Well,
it turns out there actually is a reason.
Microsoft released a blog post basically talking about all the
stuff that they implemented in Windows 11 that not every
CPU has.
And a couple of them have to do with DCH
drivers,
which are like a modern version of drivers that a
lot of older hardware doesn't have but newer hardware does
have.
And the other big thing has to do with a
few different virtualization technologies which are related to security,
which basically at the heart of it,
allow the computer and operating system to isolate certain data
from other programs in the system,
so it prevents malicious software from being able to inject
into memory of core processes and stuff.
And there's the feature in more modern
CPU's called MBEC which basically allows this to happen without
a detriment to performance.
Whereas on older CPU's which just happened to be the
CPU generations and older that are not supported by Windows
11,
those older ones don't have this feature and even though
you technically can enable the memory isolation feature,
it can reduce the CPU performance by like 40%
or so. So finally we find out the reason,
which is Windows 11 kind of wants to heavily rely
on security feature that other older CPUs don't support.
So they just said all right,
well we're going to support newer CPUs that do support
it.
Now why Microsoft did not just come out and say
this from the beginning,
I have no idea. I think people would have been
so much more understanding and less pissed off than what
they did,
which was just arbitrarily put out this CPU generation list
even though it was pretty clear that it ran on
all their computers,
but they didn't explain why you needed newer ones,
it was so stupid. Basically they had the option of
either telling people,
hey, your CPU doesn't support an important security feature integral
to Windows 11,
so it's not supported unfortunately.
Or they could go with
your CPU is just too old.
Sorry.
I wonder which one they should go with.
Which one would I do?
Ah, you, let's do the second one.
That's a great idea. Now I'll probably have to make
a separate video explaining in more detail the stuff that
newer CPUs support,
mostly that the older ones doesn't,
and that's the reason for this generation requirement,
and I'll go into more detail there.
But that's just the basic explanation.
So at least now though,
we do know that even if your computer doesn't officially
support it,
if you do know you really want to get the
Windows 11,
you can choose to do it,
although you might need to get that TPM module.
However, apparently there are some ways you can even get
around that,
but it's a little bit more difficult,
so at least it's not the end of the world.
Now again, if you guys want to keep watching,
the next video I'd recommend is definitely my TPM compatibility
guide.
Basically where I did go over how to figure out
if your computer does have a TPM module after all
and how you can potentially get one or find out
if your motherboard supports it.
If not so definitely check that out.
You can click on that there and if you guys
want to subscribe,
I make a couple new videos a week so it
should be worth it.
So thanks so much for watching guys.
And I'll see you in the next one.