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You’ll be able to run Windows 11 on older PCs—if you install the update manually

Microsoft won't officially support running Windows 11 on old PCs, but the company won't stand in the way, either.

Enlarge / Microsoft won’t officially support running Home windows 11 on old PCs, but the company won’t stand in the way, either. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Microsoft officially announced some small additions to Windows 11’s official CPU support list today, along with additional details about the operating system’s security requirements . But another, quieter announcement should quell more of the system requirement-related angst: the Verge reports that Microsoft won’t stop you from performing manual installs of Windows 11 on systems that don’t meet the particular official requirements. That means that people running Windows 10 upon unsupported systems won’t be offered House windows 11 through Windows Update, yet you’ll still be able to update if you download an ISO file and perform a good upgrade or a clean install manually.

This will be a particular boon to PCs right on typically the border of Windows 11’s system requirements, like those running 6th- or 7th-generation Intel Core CPUs or first-generation AMD Ryzen processors. These chips are missing support for a few esoteric optional security requirements but can otherwise meet this performance and Secure Boot and TPM 2 . 0 requirements plus still get modern DCH driver support from Intel, AMD, in addition to most PC OEMs.

Microsoft is still actively recommending that you don’t run Glass windows 11 on any system that will doesn’t meet the official assistance criteria. According to data from PCs running the Insider Preview builds, Microsoft says that PCs that didn’t meet the needs had “52% more kernel mode crashes” than PCs that did and that first-party apps crashed 43 percent more often on unsupported hardware. But allowing users in order to make the decision for themselves is arguably what the company should have done in the first place—people who don’t seek out often the Windows 11 update will never be offered it if their hardware isn’t up to snuff, nevertheless advanced users, testers, and IT departments who do want to run the latest software on their own computers can evaluate the trade-offs and make the decision for on their own.

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