Once again I need to start by making reference to the amount of time since my last post; it’s been a little while! While I’m still technically in the same role I’ve had for 3 years now, we’ve recently merged into a much bigger company and even though that’s been going on for a while now, my role has dramatically changed as a result, so I’m now essentially ‘starting from 0’ again. It’s a good company and I’m looking forward to getting settled, but I’m a creature of habit, and having the landscape move around me is never something that I adjust to overnight.
Anyway, here’s a quickie… If you’re like me and you’ve wanted to get the full meat-and-two-veg version of Windows 11 on your primary workstation, but don’t have a compatible CPU and/or a TPM2.0 module then here’s the answer to get it working; and it’s a surprisingly quick fix!
Firstly, check what language of Windows 10 you have installed. You can do this by running Get-WinSystemLocale from a PowerShell window; it will produce an output like this:
If for some bizarre reason you fear the ‘shell, then you can also get this info via the Windows System information viewer. To get there just click the Windows button (the “Start” menu for us oldies!) and type “MSINFO32” and hit enter. This will give you a big ol’ box that gives you loads of info about your machine. Halfway down you’ll see a “Locale” item and the value listed will be something like “United States” or in my case “United Kingdom”.
Secondly, grab your install media. This can be downloaded via the Media Creation Tool or just by downloading the ISO directly from here: Download Windows 11 (microsoft.com) Make sure that when downloading your install media it matches the language of your current OS version else you may run into issues when trying to retain your existing files, folders and programs; and nobody wants to deal with that.
When you’ve got your ISO, double-click to mount it into Windows Explorer and once the window of the contained files appears highlight them all and copy them to a new folder on the desktop called “Windows 11” or something, call it what you like it doesn’t really matter.
So all that remains is to go into the “Sources” folder and delete the apraiserres.dll file.
That’s all there is to it… there is another “official” workaround from MS that involves editing the registry which is actually listed on their official website for Windows 11 (albeit with a “not recommended” warning on there), but I found this to be easier and it still achieves the desired result. I wouldn’t recommend poking around in the registry anyway. If you’re interested, here it is:
So that’s it. You’re now free to install and update Windows 11. There have been threats by MS that they will stop unsupported machines from updating eventually but it hasn’t happened yet and I have no idea if they’ll call the bluff, but for now, we’re safe!
Revision: It has come to my attention that the above fix doesn’t work on every machine. If deleting the file from the install folder doesn’t work for you, then please proceed to the regfix at the bottom of the page which should hopefully do the trick!
