Microsoft’s announcement of Windows 11 caused plenty of confusion, due to its strict hardware requirements. Windows 11 requires 8th-gen or newer Intel processors, 4GB RAM and above, 64GB of storage device and above, TPM 2.0 UEFI, and Secure Boot feature enabled.
The CPU requirement of Windows 11 has prevented many laptops from receiving the upgrade to the new operating system because it will improve the performance and security of the latest operating system.
The issue is that older hardware doesn’t meet CPU requirements, meaning only the latest gen processors are officially eligible for the upgrade.
There have been numerous ways to bypass Windows 11 requirements of CPU, TPM, and even RAM. Microsoft has published a guide on how to bypass the requirements and upgrade existing Windows 10 to Windows 11 without meeting the required specs.
The bypass process requires you to manually modify the registry. If you are unable to make changes to the registry, you can use Rufus to perform an in-place upgrade to Windows 11.
What is Rufus?
Rufus is a third-party tool that makes it easy to create a USB drive to install Windows. Additionally, it is also possible to use Rufus to perform an in-place upgrade to any version of Windows.
using Rufus 3.18, you are allowed to create a bootable Windows 11 media and to easily bypass the TPM 2.0.
To get started:
- install Rufus 3.18 beta from Github.
- Download Windows 11 ISO.
- Insert a USB device, either go with the “Standard Windows 11 Installation (TPM 2.0 + Secure Boot)” option if you have TPM included in the configuration, or select the second option on devices that do not have TPM.
How To Bypass Windows 11 CPU requirements
If you wish to bypass these requirements without using third-party apps like Rufus, the registry hack process is also straightforward:
- click Win+r and type regedit.
- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup
- Right-click on the left side and create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value.
- Set its name to AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU.
- Switch value to 1.
Rufus or register hack method should help you install the operating system on unsupported hardware. For registry hack, you must meet the TPM requirements at any rate. If you do not have a TPM, make sure that you follow the first method which involves third-party tools like Rufus.