How to Upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 – Guide
Windows 11 has been available on qualifying devices since last month, when Microsoft released its new operating system on October 5th. Anyone using Windows 10 can upgrade for free if they have a suitable computer, but many people are still lining up for the opportunity. Microsoft is releasing the operating system in phases, so your system might not notify you to update yet – in fact, you might not find it, even if you tell your computer to check for updates. If you’re not in a hurry, the Windows 11 update will be forced onto your device at some point in the next few months, when data from Microsoft shows the update is ready for that device. When the new operating system is available to you, the update process will be similar to a normal Windows 10 update, as long as your device is compatible and meets the necessary minimum requirements.
How do I get Windows 11?
The easiest way to get Windows 11 is by checking Windows Update on a full upPC support with updated Windows 10. But because Microsoft is slowly releasing Windows 11 over many months, your PC might not see it yet. Microsoft offers several ways to download Windows 11 manually. One is to use the Installation Assistant application, which you install on your PC, to trigger a normal update installation through Windows Update. The second is to use the Windows 11 media creation tool, which automates the process of creating a bootable USB installation drive or downloading an installation ISO file. Once you have a USB drive, you can either boot from it to perform a clean install or run the installer application 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, so you shouldn’t. Finally, you can simply download an ISO file directly from the Microsoft website.
Do I need to pay for this?
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 can install and activate the equivalent edition of Windows 11. If you’re installing Windows 11 on a new PC you’ve just officially built, you must officially purchase a Windows 10 or Windows 11 license. At the time of this writing, the only sites I’ve seen selling retail editions of Windows 11 are product key scam sites that I would not trust my credit card information with, so I recommend purchasing a Windows 10 license from a trusted site. Your product key must work to install and activate Windows 11. Unofficially, I’ve had some success using older Windows 7 and Windows 8 product keys to activate equivalent editions of Windows 11 – it’s an open secret that the Windows 10 installer would continue to accept these older product keys long after free Windows “official The Update 10 offer expired in 2016. But we’ve also heard from readers who have had problems using these keys with Windows 11 or later versions of Windows 10, so your luck may vary.
What does my PC need to be “supported”?
Let’s reiterate the Windows 11 system requirements: Windows 11 Home requires a Microsoft account and Internet connectivity; Windows 11 Pro can still be used with a local account. Windows 10 Home used to let you create a local account as long as you didn’t connect to the Internet during setup, but trick doesn’t work anymore. The processor requirement is the most restrictive; supported processors include 8th generation Intel Core processors and newer, as well as AMD Ryzen 2000 series and newer processors. All these chips were released on the final 2017 and early 2018. Older computers can’t officially run Windows 11. This is a big change from Windows 10, which made it a point to support just about anything that could run Windows 7 or Windows 8 . We delve into the reasoning behind these requirements (and whether they are valid) in our analysis. But the top three are the CPU requirement, the TPM requirement, and the Safe Boot requirement.
How do I know if my PC is compatible?
When you open Windows Update in Windows 10, it can tell you whether your PC is compatible or not. But the easiest way to check manually is with Microsoft’s PC Health Check app. The first versions of this application were not very good, but the current version will tell you if your PC is compatible and also why it is or not. If you’re not using a supported processor, plan on upgrading to a supported CPU, or skip to the section where we talk about installing Windows 11 on unsupported PCs. If your processor supports it, but you don’t meet the TPM or Secure Boot requirements, the good news is that unless something is seriously wrong with your PC, both should be. features you can enable in your PC BIOS.
How do I access my PC’s BIOS?
Normally, you can enter BIOS by pressing a key after turning on your PC, but before Windows starts to boot. The key varies, but the most common ones include the Delete key, F2 (for Dell systems), F1 (for Lenovo systems), or F10 (for HP systems). The consistent but more indirect way to open the BIOS is to access the Windows Settings application, then Windows Update, Recovery and Restart Now under “Advanced Start”. In the basic blue screen you will see next, click Troubleshoot, click Advanced options, and click UEFI Firmware Settings.
How do I enable my TPM?
Enabling the processor’s embedded firmware TPM is easy, but finding the configuration to do this sometimes isn’t. If you’re not sure 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 cannot find a setting marked “TPM” somewhere in the chipset or security settings, look for “Platform Trust Technology” or “PTT” and enable it. AMD systems often refer to it just as “fTPM”, although you might also see it as “Platform Security Processor” or “PSP”. After enabling the TPM, reboot into Windows and use the Health Check app to verify that it is working properly.
How do I enable secure boot?
Any computer built since the release of Windows 8 in 2012 should support Safe Boot, which helps prevent unsigned and potentially malicious software from loading during your PC’s startup process. You should be able to turn it on in your PC’s BIOS if it isn’t already enabled, usually in the “Security” or “Startup” section. As with enabling your TPM, if you cannot find the setting, check your PC or motherboard manual. If your computer won’t boot after enabling Safe Boot, don’t worry – you just need to follow a few additional steps. Failed to boot is most likely because your hard drive or SSD is configured up with an MBR partition table (or Master Boot Record) instead of the more recent GPT (GUID Partition Table) format that Secure Boot and UEFI require. To verify, right click on Start button or use the Windows keyboard shortcut + X and click Disk Management in the menu that appears up. Right-click any drive where Windows is installed (on most computers this will be Disk 0, but not always if you have multiple hard drives), click Properties, and look at the Volumes tab. If your partition style is listed as MBR, you will need to convert the drive. To convert from MBR to GPT on Windows 10: If this conversion fails for some reason, the easiest option might be to do a clean reinstall of Windows 10 or 11 with Safe Boot enabled. When you format the drive and install Windows from a bootable USB stick, it will use GPT instead of MBR.
Final note
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