I force upgraded a 7th gen PC to 24H2...

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Hello, been a long time since I visited this forum...

So, I've got a 7 year old semi-passive desktop that I play games on at 1080p 60hz
I've been thinking about the arbitrary CPU cut off limit for the minimum requirement and decided to a force upgrade anyway as I met all other requirements. And to be honest will continue doing it till it become physically impossible to upgrade anymore.

Which raises the question, when will it become impossible to force upgrade computers with older CPU's on windows 11?

I'm tempted by a intel gen 14 rebuild with a 1700 socket but want to defer it for a bit longer.

My current rig, a modified Lian Li TU150 Mini ITX Desktop:
  • Intel Core i5-7600
  • Gigabyte GA-B250N-Phoenix WIFI Mini ITX LGA1151
  • Kingston Savage 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2400 CL12
  • Gigabyte D6 Rev 2.0 GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB
  • Super Flower Golden Silent 430 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular Fanless ATX Power Supply

54725038116_76c9b0a4ec.jpg
 
What do you use your PC for exactly, and what budget do you have?

If Windows 11 is a concern you can use an application called Rufus to bypass current requirements.


See the above.

If you mainly game you're frankly better off with AMD right now even at the low end. Intel's current generation is hit and miss, and their prior two are prone to degradation issues.
 
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Which raises the question, when will it become impossible to force upgrade computers with older CPU's on windows 11?
Microsoft have always been vague about this, which is probably on purpose. At the moment you can still upgrade to the next feature update manually.

7th gen CPUs actually meet all the requirements natively (with the right options visible/enabled in the BIOS), so a hardware cut off in the near future is unlikely.
 
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Hopefully, that should be mostly resolved by now.
So far as we know, the Core Ultra CPUs do not suffer from this problem, so if you're determined to go Intel soon I'd just buy one of those.

If you wait, Intel will probably be on their next socket by then anyway. There's no need to roll the dice with a 13th-14th gen CPU.
 
OK, so that narrows things down a bit for right now. I'm looking at either a AMD Ryzen 7 9700X or a intel i7 12700 if it was necessary.
(Because my desktop sits next to my bed, it needs to be silent so will be using the same NH-P1 passive heat sink. That means turbo boost would need to be disabled for them too.)
I'm also not really that interested in AI and actively avoiding it because I have very little use for it and due to my lower power requirements.

When the day comes when windows introduces real requirements for the free upgrades on old hardware that isn't an arbitrary cut off point, I'll do it then.
Hopefully when 25H2 comes out this year, I'll be able to force the feature update again. Because when I do get round to doing a hardware upgrade, it will be a complete rebuild from scratch.

thanks all
 
When the day comes when windows introduces real requirements for the free upgrades on old hardware that isn't an arbitrary cut off point, I'll do it then.
Hopefully when 25H2 comes out this year, I'll be able to force the feature update again. Because when I do get round to doing a hardware upgrade, it will be a complete rebuild from scratch.
From what I've heard, 25H2 will be a very simple upgrade compared to 24H2, hopefully we can just download the "enablement package" and not even have to install over the top.
 
OK, so that narrows things down a bit for right now. I'm looking at either a AMD Ryzen 7 9700X or a intel i7 12700 if it was necessary.
(Because my desktop sits next to my bed, it needs to be silent so will be using the same NH-P1 passive heat sink. That means turbo boost would need to be disabled for them too.)
I'm also not really that interested in AI and actively avoiding it because I have very little use for it and due to my lower power requirements.

When the day comes when windows introduces real requirements for the free upgrades on old hardware that isn't an arbitrary cut off point, I'll do it then.
Hopefully when 25H2 comes out this year, I'll be able to force the feature update again. Because when I do get round to doing a hardware upgrade, it will be a complete rebuild from scratch.

thanks all

The 7600X3D can be had for the same money as a 9700X and would be better for gaming, it's a 65w TDP part too so shouldn't run overly warm.
 
I've been thinking about the arbitrary CPU cut off limit for the minimum requirement and decided to a force upgrade anyway as I met all other requirements. And to be honest will continue doing it till it become physically impossible to upgrade anymore.
Which raises the question, when will it become impossible to force upgrade computers with older CPU's on windows 11?
In the past, I've installed it on a Core 2 Duo :cry:
They haven't stopped us patching it with Rufus yet, nor removing the TPM, secureboot, Microsoft account requirements, so I doubt they will, and if so there will usually be a workaround, just like there is when installing a vanilla copy to bypass the Microsoft account.
 
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Hello again, coming across a strange behaviour since the 24H2 upgrade.

Just after boot but just before log in, the windows start theme plays I have a black screen with no cursor for about 5 seconds and then everything loads normally. Is that the black screen of death?
I did a quick google and appears a common issue related to a graphics driver but mine are all up to date... weird.
 
How did you even manage that? I thought the TPM chip would stop the upgrade from actually being possible
You simply make a bootable USB Windows installer with Rufus, and select the bypass of TPM and Secure Boot, once installed, it's forever disabled within Windows, and never reactivates, despite updates.
 
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Amazing, thats a nice little hack! Thank you
You are very welcome my friend :)
Just incase it wasn't obvious, you still download the official Windows ISO, direct from Microsoft :)
So there's no fear of anything dodgy going on :)
Once you've clicked 'START', Rufus will bring up a tickbox selection for the things you want to change, i.e. the TPM/Secure Boot removal etc, it also allows you to speed up the install process, by specifying the PC name, and region settings, along with bypassing the online account requirement :) Which makes for a rather speeding install ;)

Enjoy!
 
You are very welcome my friend :)
Just incase it wasn't obvious, you still download the official Windows ISO, direct from Microsoft :)
So there's no fear of anything dodgy going on :)
Once you've clicked 'START', Rufus will bring up a tickbox selection for the things you want to change, i.e. the TPM/Secure Boot removal etc, it also allows you to speed up the install process, by specifying the PC name, and region settings, along with bypassing the online account requirement :) Which makes for a rather speeding install ;)

Enjoy!

Oh yes im familiar with the setting up of bootable USB's and getting the ISO's but I just had no idea there was an option to bypass the TPM and secure boot!
 
Oh yes im familiar with the setting up of bootable USB's and getting the ISO's but I just had no idea there was an option to bypass the TPM and secure boot!

Personally, its been quite a while since I used Rufus as my recent bootable USB's have all been using medicat
No worries mate, I just wanted to explain just in case, as in the screenshot of the Rufus app, you can't see these options, so if you hadn't used it before, you wouldn't know that the extra options pop up, upon clicking 'START', so I was just being cautiously helpful ;) :)
 
No worries mate, I just wanted to explain just in case, as in the screenshot of the Rufus app, you can't see these options, so if you hadn't used it before, you wouldn't know that the extra options pop up, upon clicking 'START', so I was just being cautiously helpful ;) :)

Thats mate! You learn something new everyday, this will be very useful when working with older PCs which I still have to deal with on occasion!
 
Thats mate! You learn something new everyday, this will be very useful when working with older PCs which I still have to deal with on occasion!
You're honestly very welcome mate, I'm happy to help, I'm glad that this will help you breathe some more life into hardware that you know is perfectly up to the task, for more years to come!
This is a nice middle finger to Microsoft for trying to screw us over :)
 
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