If you have not upgraded to Windows 11 yet, you have seen numerous “nag screens” telling you about the Windows 10 “end of life” on October 14, 2025. You may have tried to check if your PC meets Microsoft’s minimum requirements for Windows 11:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11#pchealthcheck
It turns out that you CAN install Windows 11 on most computers, even if they do NOT meet Microsoft’s minimum requirements. There is one exception – very old computers with a CPU that does not support specific machine language instructions that are used inside Windows 11. Your CPU must support both POPCNT and SSE4.2 – there is no way to bypass those requirements.
I have successfully installed Windows 11 on three PCs more than 10 years old, all of which were running Windows 7, and then Windows 10:
Dell XPS 8930 purchased in 2011
Lenovo X230 purchased in 2012
Dell XPS 8700 puchased in 2014
I found a Windows tech Youtube channel with some very good explanations:
https://www.youtube.com/@CyberCPU/videos
There are many workarounds to allow you to install Windows 11. Some of them are pretty technical, so you may need to find a teenager to help you. I used the technique described in the first video:
Windows 11 24H2 Unsupported With Rufus Updated
The Perfect Automated Windows 11 Install USB (Updated)
These videos discuss ways to make Windows 11 behave more like Windows 10. I used Explorer Patcher, as described in the first video:
Windows 10 File Explorer in Windows 11
Windows 11 Doesn’t Have To Still Suck