How to install Windows 11 on supported and unsupported PCs, 24H2 edition

Windows 11 24H2 has been released to the general public, and even though it's still called Windows 11 and still looks like Windows 11, it's probably the operating system's most significant update since its release in October of 2021.

You may or may not be excited about some of the new generative AI features, but it has a lot of other things in it, too. And even if you're not in love with Windows or the current trajectory of Windows, there are still plenty of places you need to use it anyway.

We've pulled together all kinds of resources to create a comprehensive guide to installing and upgrading to Windows 11. This includes advice and some step-by-step instructions for turning on officially required features like your TPM and Secure Boot, as well as official and unofficial ways to skirt the system-requirement checks on "unsupported" PCs, because Microsoft is not your parent and therefore cannot tell you what to do.

There are some changes in the 24H2 update that will keep you from running it on every ancient system that could run Windows 10, and there are new hardware requirements for some of the operating system's new generative AI features. We've updated our guide with everything you need to know.

How do I get Windows 11?

The easiest way to get Windows 11 is by checking Windows Update on a supported, fully up-to-date Windows 10 PC. But if you aren't seeing it there, or if you have several computers to upgrade and only want to download the new OS once, there are other options.

Microsoft offers several ways to download Windows 11 manually. One is to use the Installation Assistant app, which you install on your PC to trigger a normal upgrade install via Windows Update. The second is to use the Windows 11 Media Creation Tool, which automates the process of creating a bootable USB install drive or downloading an install ISO file. Once you have a USB drive, you can either boot from it to perform a clean install or run the Setup app from within Windows 10 to do a normal upgrade install. You can also burn the ISO to a DVD, but installing from any USB drive, even an old USB 2.0 drive, will be much faster. Finally, you can just download an ISO file directly from Microsoft’s site.

Do I need to pay for it?

Windows 11 is a free upgrade to Windows 10. So if you're running Windows 10 Home or Pro on your PC, regardless of whether your PC is officially supported or not, you'll be able to install and activate the equivalent edition of Windows 11.

If you're installing Windows 11 on a new PC you've built yourself, officially, you should buy a Windows 10 or Windows 11 license. These can be purchased from retail sites like Amazon, Newegg, Best Buy, or directly from Microsoft for between $120 and $140. Unofficially, you can buy a working Windows product key from product key resale websites for as little as $12. Many of these sites are sketchy, and we won't link to any of them directly, but it's one option for getting a working key.

Microsoft has finally closed the Windows 10-era loophole where new OS installs would accept old Windows 7 and Windows 8 product keys to activate equivalent editions of Windows 11. But if you've already managed to use one of these keys to activate an older Windows 10 or 11 install, your system should still be able to activate properly when it connects to the Internet, even if you don't put a product key in during installation.

What does my PC need to be “supported”?

Windows 11's official system requirements haven't changed with the 24H2 update. To reiterate, you need:

• A "compatible" 1 GHz or faster dual-core 64-bit processor from Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm
• 4GB of RAM
• 64GB of storage
• UEFI Secure Boot supported and enabled
• A Trusted Platform Module (TPM), version 2.0
• A DirectX 12-compatible GPU with a WDDM 2.0 driver
• A 720p display larger than 9 inches in size

Both the Home and Pro versions of Windows 11 require a Microsoft account sign-in, though there are still multiple workarounds if you want to use a local account. We'll cover these later.

The processor requirement is the most restrictive; supported processors include 8th-generation and newer Intel Core processors as well as AMD Ryzen 2000-series processors and newer. These are all chips that launched in late 2017 and early 2018. Older computers can’t officially run Windows 11. This is a big departure from Windows 10, which made a point of supporting pretty much anything that could run Windows 7 or Windows 8.

We get more into the reasoning behind these requirements (and whether they hold water) in our original Windows 11 review. But the three big ones are the CPU requirement, the TPM requirement, and the Secure Boot requirement.

How can I tell if my PC is supported?

Windows Update can tell you whether your PC is supported, but the PC Health Check app will still get you the most detailed info.

Andrew Cunningham

Windows Update can tell you whether your PC is supported, but the PC Health Check app will still get you the most detailed info. Andrew Cunningham

The version of the message you'll get if your PC is supported.

Andrew Cunningham

The version of the message you'll get if your PC is supported. Andrew Cunningham

Windows Update can tell you whether your PC is supported, but the PC Health Check app will still get you the most detailed info. Andrew Cunningham

The version of the message you'll get if your PC is supported. Andrew Cunningham

When you open Windows Update in Windows 10, it might tell you whether your PC is supported or not. But the easiest way to check manually is with Microsoft’s PC Health Check app. Early versions of this app weren’t very good, but the current version will tell you whether your PC is compatible and why it is or isn’t compatible.

If you aren’t using a supported processor, either plan to upgrade to a CPU that is supported or skip ahead to the section where we talk about installing Windows 11 on unsupported PCs.

If your processor is supported but you don’t meet the TPM or Secure Boot requirements, the good news is that unless something is very wrong with your system, they should both be features you can enable in your PC’s BIOS.

Since Windows 11's launch, most motherboard manufacturers have also released new BIOS updates that automatically enable the features needed to support Windows 11. Check your motherboard manufacturer's support page for the latest BIOS updates and flashing instructions.

How do I get into my PC’s BIOS?

Usually, you can enter your BIOS by pressing some key after turning on your PC but before Windows begins to boot. The key varies, but common ones include the Delete key, F2 (for Dell systems), F1 (for Lenovo systems), or F10 (for HP systems).

The consistent but more roundabout way of opening your BIOS is to go to the Windows Settings app, then Windows Update, then Recovery, and then Restart Now under “Advanced startup.” In the basic blue screen you see next, click Troubleshoot, then Advanced options, then UEFI Firmware Settings.

How do I enable my TPM?

Enabling your processor’s built-in firmware TPM is easy, but finding the setting to do it sometimes isn’t. If you’re unsure what you’re doing, try searching for “[manufacturer of your computer or motherboard] enable TPM” because many manufacturers have created help pages specifically because of Windows 11.

For Intel systems, if you can’t find a setting marked “TPM” somewhere in the chipset or security settings, look for “Platform Trust Technology” or “PTT” and enable that. AMD systems usually just refer to it as an “fTPM,” though you may also see it called the “Platform Security Processor,” or “PSP.”

Once you’ve enabled your TPM, reboot into Windows and look at the Device Manager or use the Health Check app to ensure it’s working properly.

How do I enable Secure Boot?

Any computer made since Windows 8 was released in 2012 ought to support Secure Boot, which helps prevent unsigned and potentially malicious software from being loaded during your PC’s boot process. You should be able to turn it on in your PC’s BIOS if it isn’t already enabled, usually either in a “Security” or “Boot” section. As with enabling your TPM, if you can’t find the setting, check your PC's or motherboard’s manual.

If your computer won’t boot after you enable Secure Boot, don’t worry—you just need to go through a couple of additional steps. Failure to boot is most likely because your hard drive or SSD is set up with an MBR (or Master Boot Record) partition table rather than the newer GPT (GUID Partition Table) format that Secure Boot and UEFI both require.

To check, right-click the Start button or use the Windows + X keyboard shortcut and then click Disk Management in the menu that pops up. Right-click whatever drive that Windows is installed on (in most computers, it will be Disk 0, but not always if you have multiple hard drives), then click Properties, then check the Volumes tab. If your partition style is listed as MBR, that's when you'll need to convert the drive.

To convert from MBR to GPT in Windows 10:

• Open Settings, then Windows Update, then Recovery, and click "Restart now" under "Advanced startup."
• When your PC reboots, click the Troubleshoot button, then Advanced options, then Command Prompt.
• In the Command Prompt window, type mbr2gpt /validate to check to make sure the drive can be converted. Then, type mbr2gpt /convert to convert the drive.
• When it's finished, re-enable Secure Boot in your BIOS, and your PC should boot normally.

If this conversion fails for some reason, the easiest option may be to do a clean reinstall of Windows 10 or 11 with Secure Boot enabled. When you format the drive and install Windows from a bootable USB stick, it will use GPT instead of MBR.

New system requirements for the 2024 Update: Copilot+ PCs

Windows 11 24H2 includes some new AI and machine learning-related features that are designed to be run locally on your device, unlike the Copilot chatbot or earlier image generation features that use (and continue to use) server-side computing resources.

Meeting the requirements for Copilot+ features requires a brand-new PC, and there's currently no way to upgrade any existing system to make it compatible. Here are the formal requirements:

• A processor with a neural processing unit (NPU) capable of at least 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS)
• 16GB of DDR5 or LPDDR5 RAM
• 256GB or more of storage

As of this writing, only three processor families meet the Copilot+ requirements: Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips, Intel's 200-series Core Ultra chips (codenamed Lunar Lake), and AMD's Ryzen AI 300-series. Intel will likely release the first Copilot+ compatible desktop processors late this year, when its next-gen "Arrow Lake" architecture is slated to be released.

Several processors, like Intel's Core Ultra 100-series laptop CPUs and Core Ultra 200-series desktop CPUs, AMD's Ryzen 7040 and 8040 series laptop chips and 8000G-series desktop chips, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3/Microsoft SQ3, include NPUs, but they all fall short of the performance Microsoft requires for the new features.

None of these requirements affect whether you can install Windows 11 on your PC. But we have entered into a new phase of the operating system's life cycle when not all Windows 11 PCs will get the full superset of Windows 11 features.

What if my PC is unsupported?

Here’s where things start to get fun (and by “fun," I mean “frustrating and moderately risky”).

Officially, any PC that doesn’t meet all of Windows 11’s requirements gets treated the same. Unsupported means unsupported, and Microsoft doesn’t want you running Windows 11 on your PC.

Unofficially, the Windows 11 installer distinguishes between two broad groups of unsupported PCs: there are PCs that support Secure Boot and have any kind of TPM at all, even an older TPM 1.2 module. And there are PCs that are missing one or both of those features.

The short version is that if you bought your PC with Windows 8 or Windows 10 on it, an unsupported installation isn’t too difficult. If your PC was made to run Windows 7 or something even older (and if it still meets the 64-bit processor and RAM requirements), then it’s more difficult.

New system requirements for the 2024 Update: Goodbye to Core 2 Duo and other old CPUs

The official system requirements for Windows 11 haven't changed, but Microsoft has made changes that will keep even unsupported installations from running on some older PCs. Changes to the kernel, compiler, and scheduler in Windows 11 24H2 mean that the update has dropped support for older 64-bit CPUs that don't support SSE 4.2 instructions.

For Intel PCs, SSE 4.2 was introduced in 2008's first-generation Core CPUs; older Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad CPUs and 64-bit Pentium D and Celeron D CPUs won't run the 24H2 update. For AMD, SSE 4.2 was introduced in its Bulldozer architecture in 2011, eliminating older Athlon, Sempron, and Phenom models. None of these CPUs could run Windows 10 or Windows 11 very well; now they won't run Windows 11 at all.

If you have a PC with one of these CPUs and you want to run Windows 11, the version 23H2 should still install and will be eligible for updates until 2026. But for hardware this old, recycling and replacing it is the better move.

It should also go without saying that you still can't install a 32-bit version of Windows 11 because there is no 32-bit version of Windows 11.

Upgrading in place on a PC with Secure Boot and any kind of TPM

If you’re running the Windows 11 installer from within Windows to perform an upgrade install, the installer will refuse to run if your PC fails to meet the CPU or TPM requirements. This barrier to entry will keep casual users from easily downloading and installing Windows 11 on unsupported computers.

But Microsoft has published a bypass for those who really want to install Windows 11 on hardware that at least supports Secure Boot and some kind of TPM. It requires a trip to the Registry Editor, so tread lightly and ensure your important data is backed up.

• Press Windows + R and type regedit and press Enter to open the Registry Editor.
• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup. Note that in my testing, the MoSetup folder didn't exist until I had already run the Windows 11 installer and allowed it to fail. You can create it yourself if it isn't there.
• Right-click the MoSetup folder and create a new DWORD value named AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU (this is case-sensitive, so pay close attention to the capital letters).
• Double-click the entry you just created and change the value from 0 to 1.

Windows 11 will now install normally, though you will see this update warning before you’re allowed to progress:

These are also the steps you'll need to follow if you want to upgrade-in-place from one version of Windows 11 to another version (like going from version 22H2 or 23H2 to 24H2). My experience has been that Microsoft will not offer the major annual releases automatically to unsupported PCs.

Doing a clean install on a system with Secure Boot and any kind of TPM

If you just want to do a clean install from a bootable USB drive, the Windows 11 USB installer will run normally on any PC as long as Secure Boot is enabled and some flavor of TPM is present, no registry edits required. This is convenient if you’re just installing Windows 11 for testing purposes or if you typically do a clean install any time you install a major OS update.

If you were paying close attention right after Windows 11 was announced, you might remember that Microsoft briefly published a document with both “hard floor” and “soft floor” requirements for Windows, pictured above. Microsoft quickly removed this language, but it’s worth noting that the “hard floor” specs do seem to be what the bootable USB version of the Windows 11 installer is actually looking for.

The easy way to skirt the Secure Boot, TPM, and Microsoft account requirements: Use Rufus

The Rufus tool will automate the removal of some of the system requirement checks we outline below.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Systems without a TPM or Secure Boot support are trickier but not impossible. We'll outline all of the steps you need to use to manually skirt Windows 11's install requirements for those of you who prefer to know exactly what settings you're changing and why.

But since the launch of Windows 11, an open source tool called Rufus has added features that automate some of the install tricks we outline below, and it can remove the Microsoft Account requirement for Windows 11 Home and Windows 11 22H2.

To use Rufus, you'll want an 8GB-or-larger USB drive, plus a Windows 11 ISO downloaded from Microsoft. Select both the USB drive and the ISO file from within Rufus and hit Start, leaving all other settings at their default values; a confirmation pop-up will appear asking you whether you want to customize your installation. It's here that you can choose to remove the various install checks, including not just the Secure Boot and TPM requirements but also the RAM and storage requirements (though this isn't something we recommend).

If you want to remove the Microsoft account sign-in requirement, note that the Rufus tool doesn't totally remove it but instead reverts the installer to the Windows 10-era status quo. If you connect to the Internet during setup, you'll still be asked to sign in before you can do anything else. If you leave your PC disconnected, you'll see a "limited setup" fallback option that will let you go ahead with a local Windows account.

Importantly, removing these requirement checks (using Rufus or any other method) doesn't prevent Secure Boot or TPM features from working once you've installed Windows 11. The same Rufus-created USB stick can be used to install Windows 11 on both supported and unsupported systems with no loss of security or functionality.

Manually installing on a PC without Secure Boot or a TPM

If you don't want to use Rufus, there are some relatively simple registry edits you can do to a vanilla Windows USB installer to get it working on a system that's missing a TPM, Secure Boot support, or both. (As far as I can tell, there's no way to do an upgrade install from within Windows 10 on one of these old computers, so a clean install is your best bet.)

• Once you've booted to the Windows 11 Setup screen, press Shift + F10 to open a Command Prompt window, type regedit and press Enter to open the Registry Editor.
• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup. Right-click the Setup folder and create a new key called LabConfig (as with all registry edits, this is case-sensitive).
• Right-click the LabConfig folder and create one new DWORD value named BypassTPMCheck and another named BypassSecureBootCheck. If your PC has Secure Boot but no TPM (or vice-versa), you can omit the key you don't need.
• Double-click each entry you just created and change the values from 0 to 1. Proceed with the install as you normally would.

Using this method, you can get Windows 10 running on anything that meets the 24H2 update's more stringent CPU requirements. This method should also work on newer computers where Secure Boot was disabled for some reason. But in those cases, I think the easier path forward is to enable Secure Boot, install Windows 11, and then disable it again.

What are the risks of running Windows 11 on an unsupported PC?

The most prominent risk you take with an unsupported Windows 11 PC is the one Microsoft makes you acknowledge before you install the OS: The company reserves the right to withhold updates, including security updates, from these machines.

Based on the last three years, I don't think Microsoft is likely to simply stop updating these machines randomly. But we may see more of what happened in the 24H2 update: Microsoft could decide to make under-the-hood changes that keep these computers from running Windows 11 at all since the company is under no obligation to keep supporting them.

And just because your unsupported PC is getting new Windows security updates doesn't mean it's fully secure. Systems without TPMs will lack disk encryption features that newer PCs can benefit from. Old, insecure driver software stands almost no chance of being patched. Fixes for firmware-level security vulnerabilities will be infrequent at best or altogether unavailable (though some mitigations can be provided via software, a reason to at least keep Windows updated on these machines).

Another risk you run, especially on computers made before 2015 or 2016, is the potential instability and incompatibility that comes from relying on older drivers. First-generation AMD Ryzen chips and 6th- and 7th-generation Intel Core processors aren’t on Microsoft’s support list, but they at least support the kinds of modern “DCH” drivers that Microsoft points to when it talks about the stability of Windows 11 systems.

But the farther back you go, the more you risk running into old graphics, trackpad, or networking drivers that can cause big problems if they’re not working properly. And PC makers and chipmakers are not going back to their 2013-era chips to release new drivers or check that their old ones are working because, as a rule, there is no incentive for doing that.

Should I go through with an unsupported install anyway?

That’s up to you. If you’re not ready to drop everything and do a clean reinstall of Windows if something breaks, definitely not.

But if you're running a first-gen Ryzen processor or a 6th- or 7th-generation Core processor and have 8GB or more of RAM, a reasonably modern integrated or dedicated GPU, and some kind of SSD, your Windows 11 experience should be pretty good. On the 6th-generation Dell Latitude laptop and Asus prebuilt gaming desktop I’ve tested the operating system on, I’ve generally found that driver support hasn’t been a problem and that Windows 11 runs about as well as Windows 10 did.

On older computers, particularly those that shipped with Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1, you’re probably better off continuing to run Windows 10 until Microsoft stops providing security updates next year. Just know that if you intend to keep using that system after October 2025,  you'll either need to pay an as-yet-undetermined amount to keep getting Windows 10 updates or you'll need to jump to an unsupported Windows 11 install or another OS entirely to stay up t0 date.

One thing you probably don’t want to do on an unsupported system is enable the memory integrity security feature. Older processors take a larger performance hit from enabling this feature than newer ones do, as Gordon Ung has demonstrated in his thorough testing at PCWorld. Microsoft has been enabling it by default more widely in the upcoming 22H2 version of Windows 11, so if you notice abnormally slow performance on an older PC that was running Windows 10 just fine, check to see whether that feature is enabled.