Full transcript of “Effortless Windows 11 Install on ANY PC: Ultimate Upgrade Assistant Guide”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 So, we have the e-waste gaming PC back on the bench, and that can only mean one thing. With Windows 10 coming closer to end of support, it's probably a good idea to revisit installing Windows on unsupported hardware. And when it comes to unsupported hardware, this thing fails big time. Stay tuned. [Music] Now, I remember back when everyone hated Windows 10. Windows 7 was losing support and everyone had to upgrade to Windows 10 to continue to receive updates. Everyone was pissed that they were losing their beloved Windows 7 and had to use Windows 10, the version of Windows that everyone hated. Now, fast forward 5 years and here we are again.
0:47 Windows 10 is losing support and everyone has to upgrade to Windows 11 to continue to receive updates. Everyone is pissed that they're losing their beloved Windows 10 and have to use Windows 11, the version of Windows that everyone hates. Sound familiar? It's a repeating cycle. I've seen this happen many times in my 25 years as a computer tech. The difference in these situations, though, is that Windows 7 systems could easily be upgraded to Windows 10. The same can't be said for Windows 10 systems running Windows 11 because of Microsoft's ridiculous hardware requirements. So, today I'm going to show you another way to get around these system requirements. But this time, we're going to be using a custom Windows
1:33 11 upgrade assistant that holds your hand through the entire process. It even helps you download the ISO that you need. But first, I got to pay some bills. So, check out today's sponsor. Are you still running Windows 11 unactivated because the license just costs too much? Then you should check out today's sponsor, VIP SCD key, where you can get a valid Windows 11 license for around $20. Stop dealing with that stupid watermark and actually be able to change your desktop background with a valid license for Windows 11. Just go to the link in the description below and pick up a valid Windows 11 license key. During checkout, use the code cyber CPU for a 25% discount. Once you have your key, go to your activation settings in Windows 11 and click the link that says
2:19 change product key. Enter the product key you just purchased and hit activate. Now you don't have to deal with that stupid watermark. And check out the description for deals on not just Windows, but Office 2. Now on with the video. So I already know what many of the comments are going to be to this video. They'll be split between people who claim updates aren't important and they're just going to continue to use Windows 10 and the other faction of people are going to be prophesizing for Linux. Now, if you want to use Linux as a result of Windows 10 losing support, then more power to you. But I'm willing to bet that the majority of people who are watching a video about upgrading Windows 11 on unsupported hardware have already decided that Linux is not for them. And if that's the case, then for
3:07 you, then that's fine, too. But don't let someone bully you into using something that you don't want to use. Except for, I guess, Microsoft, of course. Now, for the people who just are going to stay on Windows 10, all I have to say is that this is a really bad idea. I saw a headline a week or so ago that said in May's Microsoft monthly patch Tuesday included 75 security vulnerabilities, 11 of which were critical vulnerabilities that were already being exploited. The idea that as long as you have a good antivirus and you follow proper security processes means that Windows update just doesn't matter. It's just flatout wrong. I'm sorry, but it is because one of the most important security practices is keeping
3:54 your software up to date. Now, I know I'm not going to convince some people that are just set in their ways on this topic. And that's fine. I'm a technician by trade and I literally make a living off of people making bad decisions. And I guess that's kind of a twisted way to look at it, but it is what it is. I'm just here to tell you that when October rolls around, don't say that I didn't warn you. With that said though, for the people that want to upgrade their system, but they have unsupported hardware and they can upgrade to Windows 11 before October rolls around, it just keeps getting easier and easier to bypass Microsoft's hardware requirements. And today, I'm going to show you a tool that does just that. It will literally hold your hand through
4:40 the entire update process. So, let's go ahead and get this thing hooked up. All right, now that we have the system set up, let's jump on it and I'll show you how to upgrade to Windows 11. Okay, so here we are in our beloved Windows 10 that's about to get thrown on the scrap pile of tech history. So, what we're going to do is first thing I want to run PC health check right here just to kind of show you how unsupported this computer actually is. So, if we click check now to check the system requirements, as you can see, this system does not support secure boot. It does not support TPM 2.0. In fact, it doesn't support TPM of any kind. And the processor isn't currently supported for Windows 11. This is an AMD FX6300.
5:25 So, this system is about as unsupported as it gets, at least as unsupported as it gets, and is still able to install Windows 11. There are some systems that just simply cannot be made to support Windows 11, but we'll go ahead and talk about that later on in the video. And if we click see all results, we can scroll down here. And as you can see, it does support some of the more standard system requirements like it does have more than 4 gigs of RAM. It does have more than 64 gigs of space and the processor has more than two cores. So, we're going to go ahead and close this. And the first thing we're going to do is go ahead and download the tool that we're going to use to install Windows 11. Now, this is a tool called Fly by 11. And this is made by the same guy that did the crapfixer app that we covered in a video
6:11 a few weeks ago. And I found this one when I was doing that video, and I thought it'd be great for a video in the future, and that's why we're doing it now. And essentially, what this does is it acts as an upgrade assistant to do all the work necessary in order to upgrade to Windows 11 with a completely default ISO. So, in order to get it, all we have to do is go ahead and click on latest right here. And as you can see, it has been updated 3 weeks ago. And we're going to go ahead and scroll down and we're going to click and download this zip file right here. And it should just take a second to download. In fact, I already have it downloaded here anyway. But we're going to go ahead and use the one that we just downloaded by extracting it. Just like that. We can go ahead and close our browser now at this point. And then once it's extracted, we can close these other windows we have
6:57 here. And all we got to do is launch the program. Just like that. Now, it's going to give you the Windows protected error. You're going to go ahead and hit more info. Hit run anyway. And it gives you this screen right here. Now, right here, it checks to see if your system is SSE 4.2 compatible. And it checks to make sure the CPU supports the POP CNT. So, I think we need to talk about this real quick. In every video that I've made about installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, I get people asking if the video will work for CPUs that don't support SSE 4.2. Just to answer that question right now for this video and every other video I've done, the answer is no. I'm sorry. It's just no. There's no way to install Windows 11
7:44 24H2 on CPUs that don't support SSC 4.2. the that instruction set is an absolute requirement. At this point, it's literally impossible to install 24H2 if you don't have that requirement. The only way to use Windows 11 on those processors is to run 23H2. The problem with that is that 23H2 loses support in November of this year. So, just right after Windows 10. So theoretically, the only way you would be able to install Windows 11 on these CPUs is by emulating the instruction set or somehow getting Windows 11 source code and then recompiling it with the SSC 4.2 instructions taken out. Now, the issue
8:30 with this is that these CPUs already don't perform adequately to run Windows 11, even 23H2, and you're not going to get your hands on the Windows 11 source code. Well, I mean, maybe someday you will, but as of right now, you're out of luck. Even if you did though, you would have to rewrite the code that uses those instructions to make use of the older instruction set. And then you'd have to recompile it and then somehow get around Windows file protection that automatically replaces modified system files based on their digital signature and replaces them with the unmodified versions of those files. But I guess if you had the Windows source code, you could just rewrite Windows file
9:16 protection as well to not replace those files. But here's the thing, all of that work just to get a 20-year-old processor to run Windows 11, it's just not worth it. Especially when you can get an HP 4th gen i5based system off of eBay for under a hundred bucks. Unfortunately, in this situation, the only recommendation I can give you is to upgrade your hardware. The CPUs that don't support SSE 4.2 are CPUs like the Core2 Duo that were released in 2006. And here's the thing, a CPU that's 5 years old is considered outdated. A CPU that's going on 20 years old is completely obsolete. It's just not useful on modern-day
10:02 systems. I mean, they make great retro systems. Load Windows 98, unplug your network cable, and enjoy some retro games, but don't try to install Windows 11. It simply won't work, and there's no way to get around it. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm stubborn, and if there was a way to get around this limitation, then not only would I find it, and I have looked, but I would happily make a video on it. But there just isn't. And I'll be willing to bet that there never will be. So, with that said, let's get back to installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, just not obsolete hardware. Let's get to it. Okay, so here's the program itself. And as you can see, we have Clippy sitting down here in the corner. Now, it is really
10:49 funny having Clippy here. However, this could be a great way to get a cease and desist message from Microsoft. So, might not be a great idea including Clippy in the program, and he might be removed later on, but for the time being, he's still here. So, the first thing we need to do is go ahead and click this button right here. And this also tells you when the Windows 10 support ends. And as of the filming of this video, it'll be 118 days. It'll be a few days less than that once this video is finally posted. But I'm going to go ahead and hit start upgrade now. And then we're going to get the main program right here. And the first thing that we need to do is we need to have an ISO in order to upgrade. Now, as you can see, if I go into my downloads folder right here, I do have the 24H2 ISO, and that's the one that we're going to be using in a little bit, but I wanted to show you how to use this
11:35 program to download the ISO as well. Now, you have a couple different options. You can click on the Microsoft site, and by clicking that, it essentially just opens your default browser to the Microsoft website where you can download download the ISO image. And if you want to get the ISO directly from Microsoft, this is probably the best way to go. However, the way I would recommend going is using this program called phto. Now, this is built into the Rufus USB creator as well, and it's a really great little utility to be able to download ISOs. So, you just click on it like this, go ahead and hit yes to open up the PowerShell, and then once that opens, give it a little bit, and then eventually you'll get this little window. Okay? Just like this right here. Now, from this window, you're going to want to select your version of Windows that you want to download. We're going to do Windows 11. We're going to go ahead and hit continue. And then we want
12:21 release 24H2. Now on this one, 24H2 is the only one available. So you would just select that one there. You'd hit continue. You'd select the addition you want, which in this case, it's Home Pro or Education. Hit continue again. And it's going to take a minute. And then once it gets to the next step, it will ask us what the language is. And at this point, by default, it chooses English international. Now, I don't want English international. I want English United States. Now, if you're going to be upgrading your system, you want to make sure to choose the same language or the same the same language version that you have on the system currently. So, whatever language version that you installed to originally get Windows 10 is going to be the same language version that you're going to want in order to upgrade to Windows 11. Now, on that one
13:07 right there, a lot of people may not know what language was originally installed, but chances are if you're from the United States, chances are it's the United States version. If you're from an English-speaking country in Europe, then it's probably going to be English international. And then the rest are pretty self-explanatory, but I'm going to go ahead and choose English United States. And then hit continue. And at this point right here, the next step is going to be to ask you for your architecture. And the only architectures available for Windows 11 are either going to be ARM 64 or just regular x64 or AMD 64. And then at that point, you push the download button. And then once you push the download button, it'll open your browser and download the ISO from within your browser. Now, instead of waiting the 2 minutes, I'm going to go ahead and cancel this right now. Close the browser. And we're just going to go to the ISO that we currently have
13:53 downloaded. Now, once it's downloaded, you can just grab the ISO, drag it over, and drop it into the program itself. Just like that. And then it'll mount the ISO. And it'll take quite a minute to do that. So, we're going to go ahead and close this window right here. And then once it get to this step, we're going to go ahead and hit yes. It's going to open up PowerShell and do whatever it needs to do. And now Windows 11 installation can now proceed and it'll go ahead and just do the installation at this point. You can close these other windows if you want or you can leave them open. Either way, it doesn't matter. But the Windows setup itself is going to go through the same process that it typically would go through to install on unsupported hardware. And if you have a keen eye, you'll notice that it's installing it using the Windows server installer, which is a common workaround for the
14:39 hardware requirements in Windows. So, this program is actually using the server workaround in order to get Windows 11 installed on unsupported hardware. So, the next step is just go ahead and hit next. And then we're going to go ahead and get updates for the installer. This might take a second, but then once it restarts, we can move on to the next step. And at this point, you got to go ahead and accept the terms and conditions for Microsoft. And in the event that you choose the wrong language or the long wrong language version of Windows 11, this will be grayed out and it'll make make it so you will be able to keep absolutely nothing. So, what you're what it'll want to do is it'll want to do a fresh install. If you don't have the right language version of the Windows 11 installer, from this point, we're just going to go ahead and say keep files and settings and then hit next. And Microsoft's going to go through and check for updates again
15:26 because what better way to check for updates than to do it twice in the same installer. But we're going to go ahead and skip through this. And once it finishes, I'll show you the next step. Okay. And at this point, we're ready to install Windows 11. We're going to go ahead and hit the install button. And at this point, we just need to let the installer do its thing. So, it's going to take a minute for Windows to finish setup. Once it does, I'll meet you back in Windows 11 hopefully. All right. So, as you can see, this is Windows 11. And if we go into settings right here, we're going to go ahead and scroll down to system and then scroll down to the bottom to where it says about. And as you can see, we're still running an AMD FX6300, which is well below the system requirements for Windows 11. And if we
16:11 go to our PC health check here and click check now, as you can see, this PC does not support Windows 11 system requirements, but it's conveniently running Windows 11 anyway. So, as you can see, it's still extremely easy to install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware. Now, there is a lot of misinformation about running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware though that we probably should talk about. For one, many people believe that if you run Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, you'll no longer get updates. And that simply isn't true. Windows update still works exactly like it would on supported hardware. What you can't do
16:57 on unsupported hardware is upgrade between the different build updates. For instance, if you have Windows 11 23H2, you won't be able to upgrade to 24H2 using Windows update. Instead, you'll have to follow a guide like this one here. And in fact, this guide will work to upgrade 23H2 to 24H2 just fine. I also make a video every time Microsoft releases a new build of Windows 11 showing how to upgrade from the previous build. The next misconception is that a system running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware isn't secure. Now, while it's true that a lot of the system requirements that have to do with security for Windows 11, it's not true
17:45 that the system is less secure with Windows 11 than it was with Windows 10. It's just that you can't take advantage of some of the new security enhancements in Windows 11. But ultimately, that's what the system requirements are for to begin with. The secure boot, the TPM 2.0, and the CPU list are all to make sure that your hardware will support the new security enhancements in Windows 11. But the truth remains that we've been just fine for decades without these new security enhancements. For instance, Windows 10 is still secure today. And a Windows 10 system running Windows 11 is going to be just as secure as Windows 10
18:30 was before you upgraded to Windows 11. The next consideration that you should think about is whether or not your hardware can handle Windows 11. Now, we already talked about the SSE 4.2 2 standard and how even if we could get around that, you really wouldn't want to run Windows 11 on those CPUs anyway. But that standard doesn't just go for those CPUs. I mean, here's the thing. Even this system right here is kind of getting really sluggish running the latest builds of Windows 11. I just use it in my examples because it fails all of the system requirements. Ultimately, this system here is too slow for me personally running Windows 11 and I
19:16 wouldn't use it on a daily basis. But not everyone has the same standard as I do for how fast a computer should be. So, this is all going to be kind of depend on what kind of performance that you require on your system. If your hardware is just too old to run Windows 11 at the performance you want, then it might be time to upgrade your hardware. And if that's the case, you should check out this video here where I show you how to build a budget mid-range gaming system. That system actually turned out really good. I was quite impressed by it and it was really affordable. But as always, you guys have a great day.
