Windows 11 beware

[TerryMcK]

Not quite astronomy software but Windows OS's underpin many users computers. I have downloaded a copy of Windows 11 from Microsoft which contains every flavour of the "new" operating system. I have been trying it out in a virtual machine environment (as I normally do) and find it thinks my hardware is not capable of running the operating system and does not meet the minimum requirements.

Essentially it boils down to the OS requiring TPM2 to be present in the hardware (bios) which is a Trusted Platform Module to provide security features. It is in actual fact a small security module that would be present on the system board of the PC.

 

Most new PCs will have this present already as TPM2.0 requirement has been around for a number of years and has been well publicized by Microsoft within the industry. To check if your PC is capable of running Windows 11 click on the start button and type tpm.msc and press return.

 

The resulting screen will show whether TPM is present on your machine, whether it has been enabled and which version it is.

 

If it is not present you may have to change the security settings within the BIOS of your machine to enable it.

All BIOSes are different so don't ask me how to do it on your particular machine - Google is your friend.

 

A good version of TPM 2.0 will show up like this:

 

There are ways of enabling a virtual TPM (vTPM) within VMware VSphere to enable running of Windows 11 within a virtual machine on a host which does not have a TPM microcontroller present.

 

So the bottom line is check before you attempt to upgrade to Windows version 11.

Windows 10 is end of life October 14 2025 so a few years are available with the "old" OS yet and it won't suddenly stop on that date!

[AstronomyUkraine]

6 hours ago, TerryMcK said:

Not quite astronomy software but Windows OS's underpin many users computers. I have downloaded a copy of Windows 11 from Microsoft which contains every flavour of the "new" operating system. I have been trying it out in a virtual machine environment (as I normally do) and find it thinks my hardware is not capable of running the operating system and does not meet the minimum requirements.

Essentially it boils down to the OS requiring TPM2 to be present in the hardware (bios) which is a Trusted Platform Module to provide security features. It is in actual fact a small security module that would be present on the system board of the PC.

 

Most new PCs will have this present already as TPM2.0 requirement has been around for a number of years and has been well publicized by Microsoft within the industry. To check if your PC is capable of running Windows 11 click on the start button and type tpm.msc and press return.

 

The resulting screen will show whether TPM is present on your machine, whether it has been enabled and which version it is.

 

If it is not present you may have to change the security settings within the BIOS of your machine to enable it.

All BIOSes are different so don't ask me how to do it on your particular machine - Google is your friend.

 

A good version of TPM 2.0 will show up like this:

 

There are ways of enabling a virtual TPM (vTPM) within VMware VSphere to enable running of Windows 11 within a virtual machine on a host which does not have a TPM microcontroller present.

 

So the bottom line is check before you attempt to upgrade to Windows version 11.

Windows 10 is end of life October 14 2025 so a few years are available with the "old" OS yet and it won't suddenly stop on that date!

Just checked my PC, seems I'm out of luck. My Asus motherboard doesn't support TPM, as it was only introduced in 2015 and I built my PC in 2013. Things have moved on since I built mine, the standard socket is now 1200, mine is 1150, so I have 4 years to build another PC.

[TerryMcK]

You may have to buy a commercially made PC Brian as 3rd party system boards will not have the necessary hardware onboard. A lot of gamers who have made their own PCs from components have expressed concerns about TPM 2.0 which isn’t necessary to play video games.

[AstronomyUkraine]

25 minutes ago, TerryMcK said:

You may have to buy a commercially made PC Brian as 3rd party system boards will not have the necessary hardware onboard. A lot of gamers who have made their own PCs from components have expressed concerns about TPM 2.0 which isn’t necessary to play video games.

At least if I buy one off the shelf, I'm guaranteed of getting a decent video card already installed. Trying to buy a decent one is impossible at the moment.

[DaveS]

My current office PC is way out of date for Win 11 as it dates from 2011, and the CPU is an i7 2600. I'[ve been planning a new AMD Ryzen based tower for early next year for serious image processing.

I doubt that my remote PCs will run Win 11 either as the CPUs are too weedy.

Boo.

[TerryMcK]

My advice is stick with what you have for now until it keels over.

[EwanV]

My old desktop was getting to the point where it was just too slow, beginning to have parts fail on it and occasionally freeze (so not even a blue screen of death!).  I have a laptop or two... err... three... but still prefer to use a desktop for image processing and "old school" gaming, plus I leave a laptop in the obsy and control it from my desktop when I'm imaging so replacing it was an easy decision.  Deciding on a machine wasn't.

 

I eventually purchased an entry level gaming machine from Vibox and I'm very happy with it.  It's fast on the image processing side, works well with all my old games and having a solid state boot drive makes a real difference.  The machine, being primarily designed for gaming, has legacy UEFI and the TPM has been disabled in the BIOS.  This isn't an issue for me as I can make the necessary changes myself, but if you are in the market for a new PC, the guys at Vibox are really helpful (they're UK based) and as part of their pre-test process I'm sure they'd make the alterations for you (great if you don't know what legacy UEFI means and why it won't allow secure boot).

 

It's another example of why I try to always buy from UK based companies if I can.  I've not downloaded Win11 yet - like most people who switched from XP to Vista or Win7 to Win8, I'm now going to sit back and wait for the first big-fix update first.