Windows10 arrived not that long ago…
According to Microsoft’s site learn.microsoft.com
1507 was the first version and it had an initial release at 2015-07-29
so about 8 years ago it was released, and now the last version 22H2 will have a last service date of 2025, Oct 14th
| 22H2 | General Availability Channel | 2022-10-18 | 2023-05-23 | 19045.3031 | 2025-10-14 | 2025-10-14 |
Why am I bringing this up? Because Win11 is out and the drums are beating to upgrade your devices to the new version. Except there is a problem… the hardware requirements may require an upgrade of hardware as well.
Here is the release schedule of Win11 so far from the (learn.microsoft.com site):
| Version | Servicing option | Availability date | Latest revision date | Latest build | End of servicing: Home, Pro, Pro Education and Pro for Workstations | End of servicing: Enterprise, Education, IoT Enterprise, and Enterprise multi-session |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22H2 | General Availability Channel | 2022-09-20 | 2023-05-24 | 22621.1778 | 2024-10-08 | 2025-10-14 |
| 21H2 | General Availability Channel | 2021-10-04 | 2023-05-23 | 22000.2003 | 2023-10-10 | 2024-10-08 |
What does an upgrade of hardware mean? It means you need a new computer so that you can run the new version of Microsoft windows.
Here is the Microsoft long version of the life cycle of Windows11: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/windows
The other item that is necessary is TPM – Trusted Platform Module also a link from Microsoft
Traditionally, TPMs are discrete chips soldered to a computer’s motherboard. Such implementations allow the computer’s original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to evaluate and certify the TPM separate from the rest of the system. Discrete TPM implementations are common. However, they can be problematic for integrated devices that are small or have low power consumption. Some newer TPM implementations integrate TPM functionality into the same chipset as other platform components while still providing logical separation similar to discrete TPM chips.
What if you do not have a TPM chip on your motherboard?
Tom’s hardware website has some ideas as to what to do if that is the case:
{This means that not only older computers, but virtual machines will refuse to upgrade from Windows 10, giving you a message that “this PC doesn’t currently meet Windows 11 system requirements.”}
If you’re doing a clean install with a Windows 11 ISO, you can edit the registry in the middle of the setup process and tell it to skip requirement checks. We’ll show you how to modify the registry in the first section below.
In my opinion this is the most interesting point from Tom’s hardware site:
{If you have Windows 10 or an earlier build of Windows 11 installed on a PC that didn’t meet the requirements (perhaps a VM), you try to update to a new build with Windows Update and you get the “doesn’t meet requirements” error message, there’s a workaround for that. As we’ll detail in the third section below, a script from AveYo’s Media Creation tool github page will allow you to bypass Windows 11’s TPM requirement even with Windows Update.}
There are some good reasons to update to Windows 11 (which include getting latest security updates), also being in compliance with compliance bodies is important. Check the images to see if you want to do with or without TPM. The problem is for a company to have a policy of bypassing TPM is problematic for compliance reasons.
A single test machine might be ok. It might be useful to see how a single machine works within your environment , maybe not all of them. Contact to discuss
Purchase my book to read some of the theory behind why one needs to upgrade.