Enlarge / Older-but-still-functional PCs like this Dell Latitude with a 6th-generation Intel processor can currently access Windows 11 Insider Preview builds, but that may end soon. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Many older PCs have been happily running the Windows 11 previews for months now despite Microsoft's stringent official system requirements, but that's about to change. ZDNet reports that some users of unsupported PCs are beginning to see a message telling them to reinstall Windows 10 when they attempt to enroll older PCs in the Insider program after performing a clean install of the Windows 11 preview.

Neither of the two unsupported PCs I'm running the Insider Preview on—a Dell Latitude 3379 with a Core i3-6100U and a Dell XPS 13 9333 with a Core i5-4210U—have received this message yet, and they continue to download and install new updates on the Dev and Beta channels. I was also still able to opt in to the Windows 11 preview builds after reinstalling Windows 10 on the old XPS 13, albeit with the typical "Your PC does not meet the minimum hardware requirements and there may be issues and bugs" warning message. Presumably, this will change as we get closer to Windows 11's release date.

Microsoft has made efforts to explain its reasoning for why older processors won't be officially supported by Windows 11, but it has added only a small handful of older chips to the original compatibility list it announced in June. If you've been happy with the performance of Windows 11 on your "unsupported" PC and you'd like to install Windows 11 anyway, Microsoft won't go out of its way to prevent manual upgrades on older PCs , but the company has suggested that it might withhold security updates from those PCs going forward.

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Windows 11 is no longer merely "coming this fall." Microsoft will begin releasing the new operating system to the public on October 5 , starting with newer PCs (and PCs being sold in stores) and then rolling out to other supported systems over the next nine or so months. The company also says that the Amazon-powered Android app support that's coming to Windows 11 won't be ready for public consumption at launch; Microsoft will offer "a preview [of Android apps in the Microsoft Store] for Windows Insiders over the coming months."

Like recent Windows 10 updates, Windows 11 will have a phased rollout through Windows Update—most PCs won't begin to see and automatically install the update on October 5. Microsoft says that new PCs will be the first to upgrade, followed by older compatible PCs, "based on intelligence models that consider hardware eligibility, reliability metrics, age of device and other factors." As with Windows 10 updates, you'll be able to download an ISO file to initiate the upgrade yourself (Microsoft also offers tools like the Windows Update Assistant to manually trigger upgrade installs, which we assume it will do for Windows 11, too). All compatible PCs should be offered the update by mid-2022.

For PCs that don't meet Microsoft's stringent system requirements —a recent 64-bit Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm processor, enabled Secure Boot support, and a TPM 2.0 module along with 4GB or more of RAM and 64GB or more of storage—Microsoft has been cagey. Neither today's announcement nor a post from last week explaining the security requirements mentions being able to install Windows 11 on unsupported PCs. But Microsoft told reporters that it won't disallow installation on incompatible systems as long as you install the operating system manually, before the company can later assert its right to withhold security and driver updates on those PCs if it wants to.

Enlarge / The latest Windows focuses heavily on improved task management, prettier UI, and a much more ambitious Microsoft Store. (credit: Microsoft )

There are still a lot of question marks about running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware. We know that Microsoft won't go to extraordinary lengths to keep you from running it , we know that the new OS won't be offered to older PCs automatically using Windows Update, and we know that although Microsoft's preferred security settings can degrade performance on older hardware , those settings still won't be the defaults for new installs. But now, Microsoft has added another question to that list: Will unsupported PCs be able to get updates?

The company hasn't out-and-out refused to offer updates for PCs that don't meet the official requirements, but Microsoft told The Verge that old PCs running Windows 11 wouldn't be "entitled" to Windows Updates, including security and driver updates. Assuming Windows 11 receives major updates once every six months or so, as Windows 10 does, those releases may also need to be installed manually on unsupported computers.

However updating unsupported PCs works in Windows 11, it's clear that Microsoft doesn't want to encourage the use of the operating system on PCs that don't meet the minimum performance and security requirements. The news that unsupported Windows 11 installs would be allowed at all was told to reporters on background, and not announced in last week's official post on the Windows blog . The company has told us that running Windows 11 on unsupported PCs was "not recommended" and that these installs are best used for temporary test machines and not hardware you rely on day-to-day. The company has continually reminded users that Windows 10 will be receiving a 21H2 update in the fall and that it will get security updates through October 14, 2025. It all adds up to a giant implied "just because you can doesn't mean you should ."

Enlarge / Microsoft won't officially support running Windows 11 on old PCs, but the company won't stand in the way, either. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Microsoft officially announced some small additions to Windows 11's official CPU support list today, along with additional details about the operating system's security requirements . But another, quieter announcement should quell more of the system requirement-related angst: the Verge reports that Microsoft won't stop you from performing manual installs of Windows 11 on systems that don't meet the official requirements. That means that people running Windows 10 on unsupported systems won't be offered Windows 11 through Windows Update, but you'll still be able to update if you download an ISO file and perform an upgrade or a clean install manually.

This will be a particular boon to PCs right on the border of Windows 11's system requirements, like those running 6th- or 7th-generation Intel Core CPUs or first-generation AMD Ryzen processors. These chips are missing support for a few esoteric optional security requirements but can otherwise meet the performance and Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 requirements and still get modern DCH driver support from Intel, AMD, and most PC OEMs.

Microsoft is still actively recommending that you don't run Windows 11 on any system that doesn't meet the official support criteria. According to data from PCs running the Insider Preview builds, Microsoft says that PCs that didn't meet the requirements had "52% more kernel mode crashes" than PCs that did and that first-party apps crashed 43 percent more often on unsupported hardware. But allowing users to make the decision for themselves is arguably what the company should have done in the first place—people who don't seek out the Windows 11 update will never be offered it if their hardware isn't up to snuff, but advanced users, testers, and IT departments who do want to run the latest software on their computers can evaluate the trade-offs and make the decision for themselves.

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Windows 11 promises to refine window management, run Android apps, and to unify the look and feel of the operating system's built-in apps after years of frustrating hodgepodge. But none of that matters if your computer can't run the software , and Microsoft has only promised official Windows 11 support for computers released within the last three or four years . Anyone else will be able to run the operating system if they meet the performance requirements, but they'll need to jump through the hoop of downloading an ISO file and installing the operating system manually rather than grabbing it through Windows Update.

This is a break from previous versions of Windows, which up until now have had more or less the same system requirements for a decade. Microsoft actually used the ability to run on older hardware as a selling point for Windows 10, making it available as a free upgrade to all computers running Windows 7 and Windows 8—if you get as many people as possible using the newest version of Windows, the reasoning went, it would be easier to get developers to take advantage of the latest features.

Microsoft's rationale for Windows 11's strict official support requirements—including Secure Boot, a TPM 2.0 module, and virtualization support—has always been centered on security rather than raw performance. A new post from Microsoft today breaks down those requirements in more detail and also makes an argument about system stability using crash data from older PCs in the Windows Insider program.

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If you were hoping for Microsoft to backtrack on Windows 11's stringent security-focused new system requirements, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that a small handful of 7th-generation Intel Core processors have been added to the support list , and systems that use those chips will officially support the final version of Windows 11 when it comes out in the fall. The bad news is that they are the only processors being added to the support list, and Microsoft "will maintain the minimum system requirements as originally set."

Intel's 7th-generation Core processors, codenamed Kaby Lake, were launched mostly in late 2016 and through 2017, though many computers that use them were available for purchase long after that. The specific 7th-generation processors that have been added to the compatibility list are:

• X-series processors based on the Skylake-X and Kaby Lake architectures, like the Core i5-7640X and Core i7-7800X
• W-series Xeon processors
• The Core i7-7820HQ specifically, with the caveat that systems with this processor must be using DCH drivers

If the decision to support one specific 7th-generation Core i7 laptop processor strikes you as odd, you don't need to look far for an explanation—this just happens to be the CPU included in Microsoft's Surface Studio 2, which Microsoft still sells but has not updated in three years . That Microsoft was about to stop supporting a PC it is currently selling and for which it controls everything from the firmware to the drivers earned the company some well-deserved scorn from users and the press . Adding support for it is laudable, but it's also the bare minimum—Windows 11 will still leave behind Surface products as recent as 2017's 5th-generation Surface Pro and 1st-generation Surface Laptop and the cheapest configurations of 2017's Surface Book 2 (higher-end configurations used 8th-generation processors, but the cheapest models did not).