Windows 11 Compatible but USB Installer Says No


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The Health Check app says my PC is compatible, even Windows Update is telling me I can upgrade to Windows 11 but when I've just tried to install using a USB stick from the Media Creation tool I made yesterday, after selecting Windows 11, it says the PC isn't compatible.

 

I don't mind "upgrading" but I guess a fresh install would be better?

 

Any ideas?

Hello,

Does it give a reason for the incompatible upgrade?  Assuming your system meets the hardware requirements, perhaps the issue is with a third-party piece of software or a device driver that is installed on the computer.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

Hmm, I'll try it again and report back but I'm sure it just says "not compatible".

Although I still have Windows 10 on the disk, just blasting 11 over it by booting from the USB drive.

I chose that "I don't have a product key" and I'm sure during the install it'll ask me where to install Windows.

 

Although weird as I would have thought it didn't matter what drivers were installed as Windows 11 setup would create a few basic ones and ignore everything else currently on the disk?

I wouldn't put too much faith in what those apps are telling me - not since the PC Health app seemingly told people that a 15-years old Pentium 4 chip is more than capable of running Windows 11, but a 6h generation core i7 chip is not!

 

If you are certain that you have have a compatible processor, TPM 2.0, and Secure Boot and whatever else there is on the official requirements list then the problem you reported can be a sign that you don't have enough free storage on the partition you are trying to install this thing onto. I think the official requirement is 64 GB, but I'd say maybe free up to 80 or more if possible.

  On 12/11/2021 at 06:57, Sir Topham Hatt said:

Hmm, I'll try it again and report back but I'm sure it just says "not compatible".

Although I still have Windows 10 on the disk, just blasting 11 over it by booting from the USB drive.

I chose that "I don't have a product key" and I'm sure during the install it'll ask me where to install Windows.

 

Although weird as I would have thought it didn't matter what drivers were installed as Windows 11 setup would create a few basic ones and ignore everything else currently on the disk?

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If you are upgrading then maybe it is a better idea to start the upgrade from within Windows 10. 

 

The fact you were asked for a product key makes me think you were actually trying to clean install Windows 11, not upgrade.

  On 12/11/2021 at 08:40, Steven P. said:

If you are upgrading then maybe it is a better idea to start the upgrade from within Windows 10.

The fact you were asked for a product key makes me think you were actually trying to clean install Windows 11, not upgrade.

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Yeah, tried clean installing.

I don't mind starting again but it seems the only way will be to "upgrade" from within 10.

Will just go for that method.

  On 15/11/2021 at 08:23, NinjaGinger said:

What ever you do, don't put 11 on your machine. I tried it for hours and went back to 10. 11 means you lose so much functionality, it's scary.

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Roll back (to Windows 10) works fine. I am speaking from experience 😛 

Well I "put it on" my machine.

It upgraded fine.

 

I wonder if I "reset" Windows from within Windows, that's as near good as I'm going to get with performing a clean install?

 

Basically, I just want to clear out all the old crap and drivers and start afresh.

 

Seems a lot of work but I don't mind.

  On 15/11/2021 at 20:14, Sir Topham Hatt said:

I wonder if I "reset" Windows from within Windows, that's as near good as I'm going to get with performing a clean install?

 

Basically, I just want to clear out all the old crap and drivers and start afresh.

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This will absolutely work, I've done it before and also in virtual machines :) 

  • Like 1
  On 16/11/2021 at 15:46, Sir Topham Hatt said:

Well, resetting was nice.

Missed a few files to copy to another place though.

Not the end of the world but a slight shame. Weren't in the AppData/Roaming folder so missed them! 

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Ah yeah, whenever you can try to use portable apps and install them in a separate folder on D:\ so you can (relatively) quickly and easily reset C:\ OS drive.

 

On my PC I have a folder of some programs in D:\Programs\ and Docs and Pics are synced to OneDrive anyway.

  On 16/11/2021 at 16:37, Steven P. said:

Ah yeah, whenever you can try to use portable apps and install them in a separate folder on D:\ so you can (relatively) quickly and easily reset C:\ OS drive.

 

On my PC I have a folder of some programs in D:\Programs\ and Docs and Pics are synced to OneDrive anyway.

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Luckily all my documents / music and crap is on another drive, as are Steam games.

 

But one app stores it's data in the Users\me\AppData\Local folder which is a bit unusual as most are stored in the Roaming one.

Shame as they're the masters for some photobooks I made. I have the original photos so no real biggie but I'm a bit of a stalwart for keeping old stuff I don't need. Maybe it's a good thing.

Just as a close to this, I managed to restore the files / folder structure using a recovery program.

 

The only problem is that the program doesn't recognise the files anymore - even paint doesn't recognise the jpg files so they're well and truly lost.

 

Nevermind.

 

Have changed the config of the program to save the new files on a different drive than Windows so it won't happen in the future.

 

It's a shame as when I clicked the "yes reset" button, it gave me a few minutes while it was busy "getting things together". During those minutes, I remembered the files and tried to navigate to them but then it just restarted by itself with no warning! 

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