Windows 11 Compatibility

[Theldron]

Hi all,

 

I want to pull together a list of the non Win 11 PCs at the schools.

 

How do you check Windows 11 compatibility on your PCs do you use the checker can you do this without?

 

Thanks

[jmak]

I'd use a free trial of one of the network inventory tools to run a report. Several of them offer a 30 day free trial.

 

Manage Engine Endpoint Central or Tanium or Ninja One wind be a starting point

[mavhc]

WUfB will show you

[Olliedawg]

following

[Theldron]

Thanks for the responses, I have used a trial of Lansweeper in the past and seen that it has a Windows 11 compatibility report, so ill have a look at that. But if memory serves it allows limited number of clients to scan.

 

WufB, we have WSUS. Is there a benefit to WufB over WSUS?

[Olliedawg]

Thanks for the responses, I have used a trial of Lansweeper in the past and seen that it has a Windows 11 compatibility report, so ill have a look at that. But if memory serves it allows limited number of clients to scan.

 

WufB, we have WSUS. Is there a benefit to WufB over WSUS?

 

WufB is easier to manage. Set policies and then it does its own thing.. Worth looking into even if you don't use Intune

[mavhc]

WUfB benefits: 1. There's more than 1 intern who's mostly on holiday working on it, compared to WSUS

2. Save 500GB of storage

3. It's just a few gpo settings and signing up online, all free

4. Works when computers are at home too

 

Disadvantage: if you have 0 desktops with some free disk space that can p2p the updates, or a really slow internet connection, it'll be slow to get the updates

[ITGURU]

Compatible or Supported?!

We're migrating to windows 11 now and running it on custom build i7's from 2011 with ASUS boards. With an i7-2600K, 8GB ram and SSD performance is great and no stability issues, until we need to replace.

[Olliedawg]

Compatible or Supported?!

We're migrating to windows 11 now and running it on custom build i7's from 2011 with ASUS boards. With an i7-2600K, 8GB ram and SSD performance is great and no stability issues, until we need to replace.

 

Just a thought - does this not void cyber insurance, since you are technically running on "unsupported" hardware?.. I have stuck with w10 across the board at my school for the time being.

 

As for meeting the hardware requirements of w11, we have 3 IT suites to replace (x34 desktops in each), around 30 Staff desktops, about 50 laptops. Our newest IT suite is running 6th gen intel, oldest is 4th gen.

[Primus]

Compatible or Supported?!

We're migrating to windows 11 now and running it on custom build i7's from 2011 with ASUS boards. With an i7-2600K, 8GB ram and SSD performance is great and no stability issues, until we need to replace.

 

Honestly, don't do this - MS themselves have said they may break updates without warning on unsupported hardware. You're only making a rod for your own back - 2nd Gen Intel Core CPUs are ancient now, it's time to be replacing those.

 

For context we still have a lot of 4th gen Intel Core CPUs going so-so (they were ok until this year where their age is really now showing) - they will all be gone in the next few months.

[mavhc]

Just a thought - does this not void cyber insurance, since you are technically running on "unsupported" hardware?.. I have stuck with w10 across the board at my school for the time being.

 

As for meeting the hardware requirements of w11, we have 3 IT suites to replace (x34 desktops in each), around 30 Staff desktops, about 50 laptops. Our newest IT suite is running 6th gen intel, oldest is 4th gen.

 

It's as if cyber insurance requirements are complete BS, weird.

 

Spend your time/money actually securing your systems.

 

Microsoft is already sad that Windows 11 isn't that popular, they're not going to make it worse by breaking Win 11 installs.

 

Also all hardware is unsupported, there's 100 computers inside a modern PC, all with their own software that's never updated and full of bugs, written by an intern who's left the company and the source code is lost on a usb stick that fell behind a cabinet 5 years ago and no one noticed.

[Olliedawg]

It's as if cyber insurance requirements are complete BS, weird.

 

Spend your time/money actually securing your systems.

 

Microsoft is already sad that Windows 11 isn't that popular, they're not going to make it worse by breaking Win 11 installs.

 

Also all hardware is unsupported, there's 100 computers inside a modern PC, all with their own software that's never updated and full of bugs, written by an intern who's left the company and the source code is lost on a usb stick that fell behind a cabinet 5 years ago and no one noticed.

I agree with you - My school was enrolled into a Cyber Insurance policy without my knowledge & I was presented with a checklist one day to see if we met their standard.

[LoyalHeretic]

Microsoft did handily add a WMI entry called UPGRADE_EXPERIENCE_INDICATORS, we use it as the basis for a query in SCCM which adds devices to supported and unsupported collections.

 

It requires telemetry to be enabled on the devices, but isn't particularly taxing.

 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1341190/upgrade-experience-indicators-missing-on-some-syst

[Theldron]

Thanks after using the Win 11 hardware readiness script, 80% of the PCs "we're not compatible" most with CPU only 3 with TPU. I had a go installing on a couple and Win 11 went on fine.

[mavhc]

If it's not compatible hardware they don't seem to find any feature updates from WU

[ITGURU]

we've got 11 on some older quad q6600s.

whilst it works be aware that from 24h2 windows 11 release will likely break as won't support processors without sse 4.2

[MartinT]

We are using the Azure/Entra reporting for W11 compliance.

 

Looks like we will be replacing some 200 machines by the end of 2025 as they have unsupported CPUs.

[TwistedHelixis]

I was thinking of putting ChromeOS Flex on some of our older laptops, but it seems you can install apps from their Android app store into them.

[mavhc]

Isn't that a good thing? But no, you can't: While Google supports Android apps on many Chromebooks, they‘re not supported on ChromeOS Flex devices.

[KK20]

If you use WUFB but have PCs booting legacy that are otherwise hardware compatible (pretty much all of our 8th gen) then these will list as not compatible, yet they are hardware compatible (once you switch to UEFI)

[MartinT]

If you use WUFB but have PCs booting legacy that are otherwise hardware compatible (pretty much all of our 8th gen) then these will list as not compatible, yet they are hardware compatible (once you switch to UEFI)

 

We converted all of our machines to UEFI boot some time ago.

[ItsASetup]

We are having a nighmare. 120 computer all unsupported with Windows 11. Time to spend some money I guess...

[jthompson]

Intel chips older than gen5 are IIRC not officially supported for Windows 10, but they've been getting updates okay all this time whilst we've been waiting for funding to replace them.

 

I mean,

Intel chips older than gen8 are IIRC not officially supported for Windows 11, but they've been getting updates okay all this time whilst we've been waiting for funding to replace them.

 

I think you need to go as far back a Core2 before even W11 24H2 won't actually boot.

 

The only proper solution that doesn't expose you to sudden inability to get software updates is to get management to fund replacements of some kind or another. Even Chrome OS Flex isn't really an option, since there's device certification involved there that could cause updates to stop flowing/working on older kit.