Free windows 11 upgrade install#
Free windows 11 upgrade update#
Free windows 11 upgrade upgrade#

And that kinda takes some of the shine from the release of something purporting to be a whole new version of the Windows operating system.

Free windows 11 upgrade update#

The downside of this is that, shiny new UI aside, Windows 11 looks an awful lot like the Sun Valley Windows 10 update we thought it would be. That said, we're pretty confident that Windows 11 started out life as simply a larger update to Windows 10, and that close relation will hopefully help Microsoft avoid the worst excesses of buggy release software. Hence what we said at the outset about the cost here being time – and possibly a few chunks of hair – rather than money.Ĭonfusion reigns around the TPM requirement in general, right now, and Microsoft glossed over this element of the Windows 11 spec at yesterday’s launch – perhaps unsurprisingly – but it would be good to hear more on this, and for one thing whether the Health Check tool is functioning correctly (and if not, whether it’s being fixed).Windows 10 has not been without its share of system- and even game-breaking bugs on even small update releases, so something as large as a whole new version of the OS has a few more points of potential failure. It might also be the case that a motherboard could require a BIOS update first to get TPM functionality, and again, this process could prove even more of a headache for the less knowledgeable PC users out there. In that case, the user will have to travel into the BIOS and turn on TPM, and doing so may prove something of a headache for the less tech-savvy who aren’t familiar with the fiddlier bits of owning and running a PC. Firstly, the Health Check tool appears to be somewhat buggy, and seems to be misreporting that some PCs don’t have the necessary hardware to run W10 (like TPM), when in fact they do.įurthermore, it may be the case that your PC does have TPM, but that it just isn’t enabled in the BIOS. However, there are a couple of issues here.

Free windows 11 upgrade upgrade#

More modern machines will, or should in theory, but with older hardware, the TPM requirement could be problematic.Īt the moment, you can use Microsoft’s PC Health Check app (opens in new tab) to see if your PC is good to go with Windows 11 in terms of all the requirements including TPM, with Microsoft observing that “many PCs that are less than four years old will be able to upgrade to Windows 11”.

That’s all well and good, and TPM can be implemented as a separate hardware module, or in firmware – but the trouble is not every PC has it. TPM stands for Trusted Platform Module and is a security feature that comes complete with a host of defenses on a hardware level to prevent a device from being messed with. The thorny bit here is that the minimum spec of Windows 11 isn’t quite as straightforward as just checking whether you have enough system memory for example (4GB), because one of the requirements is to have TPM. You’ll also need to be running the most recent version of Windows 10, and your PC must meet the minimum hardware requirements for the new OS.

Free windows 11 upgrade install#

The other stipulations for the free upgrade to Windows 11 include that you’ll need an internet connection and to be online, as well as logged in to a Microsoft account, to install the OS.