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  "path": "/threads/win11-upgrades-on-unsupported-pcs.2634873/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-11T08:39:52.000Z",
  "site": "https://forums.anandtech.com",
  "tags": [
    "Windows",
    "Rufus",
    "Read more"
  ],
  "textContent": "There are two approaches that I'm aware of that work:\n\n1) If you want to do a clean Win11 install, then download the official Win11 24H2 ISO (I haven't tried going straight to 25H2), use Rufus to write a USB flash drive with the ISO and using the appropriate tick boxes to skip hardware compatibility checks.\n\n2) If you want to do an upgrade/repair install, then download the official ISO (again I've mostly used the 24H2 ISO), open the ISO then open an admin command prompt, CD to the mounted ISO's drive and run \"setup /product server\".\n\nWith 24H2, provided you're not trying to update something like Athlon II / Phenom II hardware (CPU needs to be able to do SSE 4.2), it's been plain sailing for me.\n\nI'm getting more variable results with 25H2. One of my old desktop PC builds (Ivy Bridge hardware) worked when being updated from 24H2 to 25H2 using technique 2 without any issues, however three PCs since then were a bit trickier. Their hardware was:\n\n1 - i5 7000 series laptop, TPM...\n\nRead more",
  "title": "Win11 upgrades on \"unsupported PCs\""
}