Whenever there’s a shiny new version of Windows on the horizon, you’ll see them. A bunch of stickers. A sea of stickers. A veritable galaxy of stickers on laptops and desktops on all the shelves of digital and physical retailers, with “Windows XX upgrade available” printed on them. And, without fail, actually securing that upgrade can be a bit of a headache. So, it is in some PCs sold with the promised upgrade to Windows 11 that, it turns out, will not come because the hardware cannot officially handle it.
The company said the latest update in the Known Issues section of the Windows 11 21H2 release health post, marked “resolved” at the top of the issue list.
Some hardware is not eligible for Windows 10 and Windows 11, version 21H2 devices are offered an incorrect upgrade to Windows 11. These ineligible devices do not meet the minimum requirements to run Windows [sic] 11. Devices experiencing this issue did not complete the upgrade installation process.
According to notes found on Tom’s Hardware, the affected versions include Windows 10 22H2, 21H2, and 20H2, indicating that this is a problem for at least some PCs sold for up to a couple of years. years ago.
Microsoft posted this information in a support changelog and not, say, a press release, indicating that anyone who has problems with their upgrades suddenly failing through Windows Update can absorb of eggs. (That’s not a direct quote.) Users who are set to use Windows 11 should upgrade their hardware or look for a workaround.
Having said that, Windows seems to have a collection of embarrassing issues surrounding the W11 upgrade of late. Last week watermark messages started appearing on Windows 11 copies running on hardware that doesn’t officially support the newer version. This, despite the fact that it has been shown that Windows 11 can run on lighter systems than previously suspected, even without Microsoft’s official blessing.
In short, the process of upgrading to Windows 11 (and the eligibility of hardware for said upgrade) remains a murky mess more than a year after the full public release of the operating system. system.