About a year ago, I upgraded my home laptop to Windows 11. I swapped out my old system drive (which was a spinner) for a new SSD, so I had to go through the process again. I ran into a few different issues this time around that are worth putting to paper.
Windows 10 Install – Easy
After installing the new drive, I followed the instructions to create Windows 10 bootable media. Booted from the USB, installed Windows 10. Nothing remarkable, just enough to get into the machine. After a few rounds of Windows updates, I felt like I was ready to go.
Windows 11 Upgrade – Not so Easy
My home laptop is running a CPU that isn’t compatible with Windows 11. That doesn’t mean I can’t run it, it just means I have to hack Windows a bit.
In the past, I followed this guide to set the appropriate registry entry and get things installed. This time around should be no different, right?
Wrong. I made the change, but the installer continued to crash. A little Googling took me to this post, which lead to this article about resetting Windows Update in Windows 10. After downloading and running the batch file from the instructions, I was able to install Windows 11 again.
Done!
After a bit of waiting, I have a Windows 11 machine running. Now time to rebuilt to my liking… Thank goodness for Chocolatey.