britechguy
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 4,922
- Location
- Staunton, VA
Much conversational water has flowed under the proverbial bridge both about the installation of Windows 11 on incompatible hardware and setting up initially with a local account.
Last night I had my first "there's no tricks or issues here" with doing both of these things last night on an aged Dell Inspiron 5759 I inherited from a client. Let me tell you, Inspiron line or not, this thing is a 17" tank of a laptop. I haven't held a laptop this large and heavy in many years!
The machine had Windows 10 on it with a Microsoft Account linked user account for which I did not have a password, so for amusement I thought I'd just go ahead and do a completely clean reinstall with Windows 11 instead of 10 to see how it would go. Since this machine has an i7-6500U processor, that alone makes it not meet the minimum requirements for Windows 11.
So, when I get to the first language screen, I hit Shift + F10 to open a command prompt, fire up diskpart, and do a "clean all" (I want that drive wiped) and "convert gpt" on the system drive. After that I let the initial install bits for Windows 11 proceed and go to bed.
This morning, the machine is sitting there on the Internet Connection screen, and lo and behold, it has a link at the bottom for, "I don't have internet." I clicked that and away we went without a hitch! No complaints that I had to stop until I had an internet connection - and this is Windows 11 Home and using very recently created install media using the latest ISO and Rufus, but not taking out the TPM or processor checks. The only customizations were for setting all the initial privacy questions to "No" so I don't have to.
Then we come to the user screen, and it's already asking for a local user because that's all it can ask for when there's no internet connection. The only oddity was that I had to confirm the password chosen the usual 2 times, initially, but then a third separate screen came up asking for yet another confirmation.
I've not had this kind of Windows 11 install on either supported or unsupported hardware in my memory. In order to install on incompatible hardware, I always needed to use Rufus (or similar, but I do use Rufus) to create the install media with the hardware checks disabled. Internet connections have been required, Microsoft accounts required (unless you escape out to another Command Prompt and issue: start ms-cxh:localonly.
The end result is a successful Windows 11 install, with a local user account, and there are no desktop watermarks or similar nor any warnings of any kind about incompatible hardware. A manual kicking off of a check for updates after having established an internet connection after all the initial setup was already completed has worked perfectly normally.
Just wanted to report on what, for me, has been an exceptional experience with the installation of Windows 11 on incompatible hardware and a definite difference with an absence of "the usual gyrations" for incompatible hardware and using a local Windows user account from the get-go.
Last night I had my first "there's no tricks or issues here" with doing both of these things last night on an aged Dell Inspiron 5759 I inherited from a client. Let me tell you, Inspiron line or not, this thing is a 17" tank of a laptop. I haven't held a laptop this large and heavy in many years!
The machine had Windows 10 on it with a Microsoft Account linked user account for which I did not have a password, so for amusement I thought I'd just go ahead and do a completely clean reinstall with Windows 11 instead of 10 to see how it would go. Since this machine has an i7-6500U processor, that alone makes it not meet the minimum requirements for Windows 11.
So, when I get to the first language screen, I hit Shift + F10 to open a command prompt, fire up diskpart, and do a "clean all" (I want that drive wiped) and "convert gpt" on the system drive. After that I let the initial install bits for Windows 11 proceed and go to bed.
This morning, the machine is sitting there on the Internet Connection screen, and lo and behold, it has a link at the bottom for, "I don't have internet." I clicked that and away we went without a hitch! No complaints that I had to stop until I had an internet connection - and this is Windows 11 Home and using very recently created install media using the latest ISO and Rufus, but not taking out the TPM or processor checks. The only customizations were for setting all the initial privacy questions to "No" so I don't have to.
Then we come to the user screen, and it's already asking for a local user because that's all it can ask for when there's no internet connection. The only oddity was that I had to confirm the password chosen the usual 2 times, initially, but then a third separate screen came up asking for yet another confirmation.
I've not had this kind of Windows 11 install on either supported or unsupported hardware in my memory. In order to install on incompatible hardware, I always needed to use Rufus (or similar, but I do use Rufus) to create the install media with the hardware checks disabled. Internet connections have been required, Microsoft accounts required (unless you escape out to another Command Prompt and issue: start ms-cxh:localonly.
The end result is a successful Windows 11 install, with a local user account, and there are no desktop watermarks or similar nor any warnings of any kind about incompatible hardware. A manual kicking off of a check for updates after having established an internet connection after all the initial setup was already completed has worked perfectly normally.
Just wanted to report on what, for me, has been an exceptional experience with the installation of Windows 11 on incompatible hardware and a definite difference with an absence of "the usual gyrations" for incompatible hardware and using a local Windows user account from the get-go.
