Win 10 to Win 11 upgrade?

So, how likely am I to be successful upgrading my Win 10 to Win 11?  Currently running a pre-Covid system, dual boot Linux/Win 10.  Ryzen 5 3400G processor, 16GB RAM, yada yada.

I guess this TPM stuff is likely to be the stumbling block, since I dunno what it is.

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

I have lessor equipment running on 11.  Try the upgrade and it'll tell you if it can or not.  TPM is basically a boot protection that came out to counter boot persistent virus.

Your computer probably can.  I have an older computer that just needed a BIOS update to bring the TPM up to date.  There are also TPM modules you can buy (cheap) to plug into the motherboard (if it has the port for it). 

It's also entirely possible Microsoft will provide some sort of upgrade path for older computers.  They recently said they would allow upgrades to unsupported computers.... but would not provide security updates to them (which makes the upgrade pointless to most everyone).

Stampie said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

I have lessor equipment running on 11.  Try the upgrade and it'll tell you if it can or not.  TPM is basically a boot protection that came out to counter boot persistent virus.

Sounds like you're describing UEFI Secure Boot mode, TPM is a cryptographic enclave device that can generate and return cryptographic keys without any process on the computer having access to it, a concept that sounds a little too DRM-ish for my taste. I don't make any use of TPM on my Linux computers.

The TPM contents aren't safe from physical access with about $50 of electronics though: https://pulsesecurity.co.nz/articles/TPM-sniffing

Edit: The most common use of TPM is for handling full-disk encryption keys. A lot of Windows PCs have full-disk encryption enabled although you wouldn't notice it because TPM basically enters the encryption key for you, so the PC boots up unattended. On my Linux laptop I type in the key on boot. No TPM needed, no need to worry about a thief getting access to files on the laptop by sniffing communications on the mainboard at boot.

Do you actually WANT Win 11? I spent the first several days with my new PC trying to de-11 it. 

In reply to brandonsmash :

It's not about what he wants, it's about what Microsoft wants, and Microsoft wants every off their "forever" Windows 10, by October.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

He mentions TPM because TPM 2.0 is required to run windows 11. 
 

@brandonsamash: Windows 10 support is ending this October. Microsoft intends to stop all security updates, etc at that point. It will no longer be safe to run a windows 10 system connected to the Internet past that point. 

In reply to GameboyRMH :

You are correct. 

2 of my 3 computers are on 11 and the only discernable difference for 99% of usage is that the one with 10 on it periodically gets reminders to go to 11.

brandonsmash said:

Do you actually WANT Win 11? I spent the first several days with my new PC trying to de-11 it. 

That's a good question, and the answer is a resounding "No!"  The only thing I use windows for is TurboTax, and I was assuming that they would require 11 this year.  Now, I'm not sure that's true, as I've seen "Win10 or better" listed in the requirements.

There are a couple things I dislike about Windows 11 from a user-perspective, but I don't have any hatred towards it. The abbreviated right-click context menu bothers me a little, because it's an extra click to do almost anything, and it's a change that nobody asked for, but that's not a show stopper.

It's more secure, right? Memory Integrity seems like a good way to keep a lot of malware at bay.

I think it can now be more easily installed on older systems. I would maybe check your motherboard firmware to ensure that it supports 11.

Read somewhere you can get another year of win 10 support for $30 from microsoft.

confuZion3 said:

There are a couple things I dislike about Windows 11 from a user-perspective, but I don't have any hatred towards it. The abbreviated right-click context menu bothers me a little, because it's an extra click to do almost anything, and it's a change that nobody asked for, but that's not a show stopper.

This seems to be the defining GUI paradigm of Win11: Make menus look cleaner by hiding things in submenus so that users have to click around more.

Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) said:

Read somewhere you can get another year of win 10 support for $30 from microsoft.

Yep that's correct. Pretty sure I'm going to do this with my gaming PC because I sure can't afford new hardware anytime soon, not that I would otherwise have any need for it.

Well, as an experiment, I cobbled together a system from junkbox parts.  Motherboard a Gigabyte Aorus B550M with a BIOS date of 7/21, CPU an early-ish Ryzen 3, 16GB RAM, and a 1TB SSD.  Install from a USB stick went fine. 

When I checked the system info post-install, it was reporting a problem with TPM.  That did not appear to impede the install in any way.  I went into the BIOS and turned on AMD fTPM and the error message is gone.  Dunno if my system is any safer. 

So, if I run tpm.msc, I can verify that the TPM is ready, and that the spec. version is 2.0.  There's an option to "prepare tpm."  Do I want to do that?

Are you still getting any TPM errors? If not, there's no need to click that. Be especially careful around the "Clear TPM" controls since that could cause the key to be lost for an encrypted disk!

Nope, no errors of any kind that I'm aware of.  I'll call it done.

Now, if I want to pluck this old Ryzen 3 CPU off of the MB and replace it with a Ryzen 5 5600X or a Ryzen 7 5800X, is Win 11 going to have a cow?

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

OSes pretty much never complain about CPU upgrades unless you're trying to run a not-so-new OS on an extremely new CPU. With the latest Win11 and an early-pandemic-era CPU it'll be fine.

So,  I am getting a large number of crashes and prompted by windows to reboot.  Guess I'll do a smidge more tinkering.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

So I got to thinking about this a bit more.  Is it possible the system is crash prone because the OS was installed with the firmware TPM turned off, and now it's turned on?

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

I don't think so, from what I've seen once the TPM errors are gone the issue should be resolved, you might need to dig through the Event Viewer to get details on the crashes.

GameboyRMH said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

... you might need to dig through the Event Viewer to get details on the crashes.

No can do. Lol.  Reports an error, then reboots.

second try....  bunches of warnings and errors.  Kernel event tracing, security app, certificate services client - certenroll, bug check, kernel power, volmgr, application error, distributed com, tpm-Emily,  etc etc etc.

633 events over three days of very little on time.