Windows 10 to Windows 11

This is my first pure computer post for a while. My windows 10 PC count is currently 5, one in my office, one in my workshop, one under my TV, one used by my wife, and one by her mother. None of these machines are new enough to move to Windows 11 through the normal path, 4 of these machines originally came with windows Vista! So with 5 unsupported PCs and a deadline looming, I was vaguely starting to think about what I could do about this, remembering that it was not a straightforward job to circumvent the need for more modern machines.
I revisited the process this morning and found out that is now much easier. The process now is just to make windows think it is installing a server version, which has very few prerequisites. This video is what I used.

First try was on my workshop PC, a tiny Lenovo paperback sized machine, which I use for graphics work, running my Mimaki CG-60st cutting plotter and my Creality Ender-3 V3 SE 3d printer.

Bang! Worked perfectly! Next my office machine, a similar set up to my workshop machine, with similar usage, plus office type stuff. Bang – another perfect upgrade. Entertainment NUC PC under the TV. This one was an International English install, so needed a different download. Bang, done! Wife’s Alienware laptop, very quickly installed, but this one was a Windows 11 Home rather than Pro.

One day, 4 upgrades to Windows 11 from Windows 10. I will do the last one in a few days, don’t need any agro from the mother-in-law, so will make sure it all works properly first!

Update 3 days later. One major issue came up, Windows 11 Pro 24H2 does not like using guest access to my NAS drives, a quick update on GPEDIT reverted back to allowing guest access. Details here

If you need to do a windows repair install to an install on unsupported hardware, this is the way to do it. One of my installs developed a fault on a disk, so I did a chkdsk /r, and all was good but wouldn’t finish off a batch of updates. Performed another chkdsk, then did a repair install using this method, and updates are now working fine.

Here is the method in a nutshell.

Create an installable version of Windows 11 on a USB stick, use instructions off the windows page to do this.

Start up the CMD line terminal window by right clicking on the Windows start icon on the task bar, choosing Run, and typing in CMD at the prompt.

Change to the usb stick by typing its drive letter at the prompt:
e:

Move to the sources directory on the usb stick using the CD command at the prompt:
cd e:\sources

Run setupprep.exe from the sources directory using the /product server attribute by typing this at the prompt:
setupprep.exe /product server
This command is instead of running setup.exe from the parent directory which automatically checks for hardware requirements, which we don’t want.
This will fool windows 11 into thinking it is installing a windows 11 server version, which is not so hardware dependent.