Windows 11 on < 8th generation Intel CPU's?

[supportman]

I see Windows 11 is now not possible to be installed on less than an 8th generation Intel CPU.

 

This basically discounts 20% of our computers in school from upgrades and obviously with the 14th Oct 2025 Windows 10 'End of Life' fast approaching I am looking for solutions to be able to keep our Cyber Essentials certification!

 

How are people getting round this? Are you buying New PC's? Somehow hacking the upgrades? Or hoping Microsoft delays the windows 10 EOL?

 

I'm quite surprised how aggressive Microsoft have been with this and why it hasn't kicked up more fuss?

 

Our results and we are by no means a low technology school or late adopter:

 

[3s-gtech]

We’ve been steadily replacing over the last four years in anticipation of this.

 

Anything left over will be licensed for extended support for 10.

 

I’ve installed 11 on a couple of unsupported machines and it works fine, but I won’t be going that way more broadly.

[Cat_Jam148]

There is no getting around this. Our stance is that any machine that can't run the latest version of Windows 11 natively (i.e with no hacks or workarounds) is to be disposed of.

 

I know Microsoft are offering extended support past the EoL date for Windows 10 at an extra cost, but we instigated an upgrade program early last year to make sure that we aren't affected by this. Microsoft have been pretty clear about this for awhile, I'm still shocked honestly that people in the IT world are being caught by 'surprise' this late in it's lifecycle. The news has been out there since early 2023 or earlier I believe?

 

Once I heard about it, I put a plan forward at the next IT meeting with SLT and laid out the facts. I explained the risks and they put up the money.

Edited March 13, 2025 by Cat_Jam148

[Primus]

The announcement regarding 8th gen Intel CPUs and Windows 11 was for the OEM certification process - not what Windows 11 will support or allow itself to be installed upon.

[Norphy]

The announcement regarding 8th gen Intel CPUs and Windows 11 was for the OEM certification process - not what Windows 11 will support or allow itself to be installed upon.

 

That's not right. The recent confusion was regarding a knowledge base piece that MS put out which only included 10th or 11th gen and newer Intel CPUs. That was for the OEM certification process. Windows 11 has never been officially installable on anything less than an eighth gen Core CPU, with one exception for a model of Surface computer which never came with anything newer than a 7th gen.

 

Yes, there are workarounds, but the eighth gen Core has always been the official oldest CPU Windows 11 supports.

[supportman]

The announcement regarding 8th gen Intel CPUs and Windows 11 was for the OEM certification process - not what Windows 11 will support or allow itself to be installed upon.

 

As above I don't think this is correct. I've just tried to install on a 7th generation PC and Windows 11 installer clearly blocks it.

[Primus]

That's not right. The recent confusion was regarding a knowledge base piece that MS put out which only included 10th or 11th gen and newer Intel CPUs. That was for the OEM certification process. Windows 11 has never been officially installable on anything less than an eighth gen Core CPU, with one exception for a model of Surface computer which never came with anything newer than a 7th gen.

 

Yes, there are workarounds, but the eighth gen Core has always been the official oldest CPU Windows 11 supports.

 

Err that's what I said.

[Primus]

As above I don't think this is correct. I've just tried to install on a 7th generation PC and Windows 11 installer clearly blocks it.

 

That's always been the case, the recent announcement was that 8th gen weren't good enough to be certified for an OEM releasing a new Windows 11 PC now.

[3s-gtech]

As above I don't think this is correct. I've just tried to install on a 7th generation PC and Windows 11 installer clearly blocks it.

7th gen isn't supported. I think that generation is unique in that it was and now is only supported on one version of Windows.

 

To the skip!

[paulkerton]

I am looking for solutions to be able to keep our Cyber Essentials certification!

 

Somehow hacking the upgrades?

 

Hacking the upgrade would mean you're on an unsupported device, and you'd fail CE.

[jthompson]

It was a similar situation with Windows 10, although nobody seemed to worry about that in the same way. Has anyone failed Cyber Essentials for running Windows 10 on a 4th gen (i.e. below Win 10 stated requirements)? (serious question).

[3s-gtech]

The Windows 10 installer was really flexible - it had to be ancient to not work! Early P4, pre-AMD64 stuff I think. I also think they've updated the support lists since 1507 came out, so they don't reflect the situation back then.

 

Windows 11 has gone much stricter on the checks. They can be bypassed of course, but if you want to maintain CE forget that.

[jthompson]

Windows 11 has gone much stricter on the checks. They can be bypassed of course, but if you want to maintain CE forget that.

 

We've never found that we've need to do anything extra to get Win11 to install on our older hardware. If we point it at MDT, it works and keeps itself up to date (thus far), so it doesn't appear that we have to actively bypass or hack anything to get it running. The CE thing is interesting, since I interpret their wording on running a supported OS as being an OS that's still within its product lifecycle (e.g. you're not running Server 2008 still) and has the most recently published updates installed (i.e. you're not holding back updates for too long). Can anyone confirm that CE will fail specifically because an otherwise supported and up to date OS is running on older hardware?

 

Asking for a friend.

[3s-gtech]

MDT has worked on 4th and 5th gen stuff for me (one instance!) but my USB installer won't as it isn't tweaked. Rufus can do that as part of the image. All at your own risk.

 

It's academic for us anyway - most of what we need to replace is Core2 - they don't run 10 very well, so not even trying 11 on them!

[Rob_D]

We're on course to have everything <8th gen replaced apart from 1 IT suite which we're looking at getting a year of ESU for with the intention of upgrading summer '26, and the old mini-pcs for digital signage which are going over to linux. Then we've just got to deal with the CCTV stations, but they're on LTSC so we've got until '29 to deal with them (by which time Windows 12 will probably be out).

[chazzy2501]

I thought the actual limitation is TPM2.0 which is included with 8th gen intel and 3rd gen AMD. BUT some 6th and 7th gen PCs could have TPM2.0 I think the prodesk PCs had it. I had some HP Protab 64bit quad core Atom! tablets with TPM2.0 and they installed ok.

[supportman]

I thought the actual limitation is TPM2.0 which is included with 8th gen intel and 3rd gen AMD. BUT some 6th and 7th gen PCs could have TPM2.0 I think the prodesk PCs had it. I had some HP Protab 64bit quad core Atom! tablets with TPM2.0 and they installed ok.

 

No. TDM chip support and the CPU generation are separate things. Both have minimum requirements.

 

We have TPM on all machines here except 2, its the CPU requirement which has become the issue.

[ITGuyNW]

I have four IT suites on gen 5 CPUs on Windows 11. I know its not supported but unless I'm given any money to replace them, there's nothing I can do.

[mikes]

Yeah that sucks, we are lucky when we did our big hardware refresh in 2018 or whenever it was, it happened to fall on 8th Gen Intel, so all of our stuff is supported luckily. Our 8th Gen laptops from then are falling apart though, CMOS batteries starting to go, specs getting bad (8GB RAM), so I wouldn't really want Win 11 on anything below that anyway - we have 2 computers on Gen 6 or so with old rotational HDD's and they are very slow (will trash these and replace)

[5nowman]

ok so windows 10 on something less than 8th gen passes CE

Windows 11 on anything less than 8th gen will not pass CE ?

 

How does it work if you do the rufus bypass.. and windows 11 installs... does this pass the CE ?

[SPM99]

We have a lot of i5 6th Gen PCs with TPM2 that are running Win11 24H2 without issue, deployed via MDT. 

They will be replaced eventually but not planning that any time soon as there is simply no cash (yet).

 

[supportman]

On 21/03/2025 at 17:28, 5nowman said:

ok so windows 10 on something less than 8th gen passes CE

Windows 11 on anything less than 8th gen will not pass CE ?

 

How does it work if you do the rufus bypass.. and windows 11 installs... does this pass the CE ?

 

Yep exactly.

 

You can of course use rufus or other methods to bypass, but then your computer is not supported by Microsoft and you would also fail Cyber Essentials certification.

[jthompson]

Still hoping that someone can confirm from experience whether or not running Win 11 on pre-8th gen hardware results specifically in a CE accreditation failure.

[Fazza]

20 minutes ago, jthompson said:

Still hoping that someone can confirm from experience whether or not running Win 11 on pre-8th gen hardware results specifically in a CE accreditation failure.

 

Please correct me if I am wrong, they dont turn up and inspect all your hardware and software, they simply ask you if to fill in a form where you make a declaration saying you are using supported hardware?

If you install Windows 11 on a Gen7 CPU (i.e. unsupported hardware) and then make a declaration on the form saying all the software you have is installed on supported hardware then you will pass because you have not been correct in your answer?

[DrCheese]

Why are people so desperate to run Windows 11 on unsupported hardware?

It's £1 per machine for the first year of extended support, £2 & then £3 for years 2/3 respectively - This will get you until 2028.

For us, doing the full 3 years for the 90 odd machines we have left is still cheaper than a single new machine, it's peanuts in the scheme of things (& our numbers will reduce in the next 3 years anyway)

 

Or run the Windows 10 LTSC on those machines and call it a day.

 

I get, it I like having the latest everywhere but why sweat this?

Edited March 24, 2025 by DrCheese