Report claims almost half of systems are ineligible for Windows 11 upgrades

Daniel Sims

Posts: 1,319   +43
Staff
The big picture: Windows 11 has been known for its onerous system requirements since before it launched. A new report claims those requirements are keeping a significant number of systems from upgrading and that Windows 11 adoption is lagging. Other reports are far less dire but still not optimistic.

Lansweeper's Windows 11 readiness report shows that of 30 million workstations from 60,000 organizations, 57.26 percent are eligible for automatic Windows 11 updates. Over 40 percent don't meet Microsoft's notorious official system requirements.

In the initial run-up to Windows 11's launch, much controversy centered on its requirement for TPM 2.0 and a relatively recent CPU. Microsoft wants users to have at least an Intel 8th gen or AMD Zen 2 processor, but the company is considering allowing some Intel 7th-gen chips and Zen 1s. According to Lansweeper, those requirements are the main roadblock for ineligible systems.

The RAM requirement isn't a problem – 92 percent of surveyed workstations meet it. Conversely, only 57 percent of systems meet the CPU requirement, and 64 percent have the necessary TPM. Many of those workstations may be compatible with TPM 2.0 but might not have enabled it since some systems must engage the feature manually. While not great, these numbers represent a 12 percent improvement over 2021.

Microsoft's system requirements for Windows 11 aren't ironclad, however. Users may install the new OS onto ineligible systems, but they might not receive automatic updates.

Multiple surveys show that Windows 11 adoption has been slow compared to Windows 10. However, Lansweeper's numbers seem calamitous compared to AdDpulex's and Steam's.

In April, Lansweeper said only 1.44 percent of devices ran Windows 11 compared to the 1.71 percent using the two-decades-old Windows XP. This month, the group's Windows 11 number sits at 2.61 percent – finally above XP but still behind the end-of-life Windows 7's 3.38 percent.

AdDuplex's June 2022 numbers are very different but still mediocre. The report shows Windows 11 at 23.1 percent – a meager 3 percent increase from April. The most pessimistic report on Windows 11 adoption is AdDuplex's Windows history chart for June, which shows the OS's user growth flattening far sooner than every version of Windows 10 since 2016. Meanwhile, the September 2022 Steam survey shows Windows 11 adoption at 24.84 percent – up 1.06 percent from August and behind only Windows 10's 68.49 percent.

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You have no idea how happy I am I can't upgrade or have upgrade installed without my knowledge.
When I build my PC, Win11 won't really be avoidable, but I rather not use that inefficient UI for a bit longer.
There are probably more than few 3rd party tweaks that add some menus back, move the start menu, bring back the progress bar, group etc. It will be fine in the end, I guess, but I am in no hurry to switch to the new one - I am not even sure they fixed that resource problem last updated introduced, where 10% of power just vanished.
 
11 is OK for me. But I use 10 mostly. 7 is still is use though
You have no idea how happy I am I can't upgrade or have upgrade installed without my knowledge.
When I build my PC, Win11 won't really be avoidable, but I rather not use that inefficient UI for a bit longer.
There are probably more than few 3rd party tweaks that add some menus back, move the start menu, bring back the progress bar, group etc. It will be fine in the end, I guess, but I am in no hurry to switch to the new one - I am not even sure they fixed that resource problem last updated introduced, where 10% of power just vanished.
Linux is calling baby! 99% of what I have runs on it now, the only exceptions are halo multiplayer and adobe products.
 
I like how Redmond seems to think that getting a notification that your PC isn't Windows 11 ready is seen by anyone as a bad thing.

After the debacle that was Windows 10 basically fooling Windows 7 users into updating the OS, getting the red X for this is as good as a negative result on labwork for a terminal illness.
 
Windows 11 22H2 is a mixed bag of both good and bad....

The Good>

you can still completely uninstall edge

you can activate Windows 11 without a Microsoft Account

You can still have right click copy/paste

you can still run windows 2 go

you can run Windows 11 on a sandy bridge

you can run it on a 32GB MBR partition

TPM is not required

AND,....
you can activate a single licensed copy of windows 11 and then run it on several computers simultaneously ONLINE yet remain activated, updated and customizable on every machine without a single deactivation on any of them
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Bad >

Windows XP-SP2 running Online in a full Admin account without a single Microsoft security update is still more secure than a fully updated copy of Windows 11 22H2

These are facts
Fact checking is welcomed!
 
Both my desktop and craptop easily meet the requirements but I don't care. I just have no intention of switching until they've ironed out all of the bugs. I completely ignored Vista and Windows 8 for the same reason.

My FX-8350 runs Windows 10 just fine and when I got the message that the FX-series wasn't supported by Windows 11, my response was "GOOD!". :laughing:
 
Linux is calling baby! 99% of what I have runs on it now, the only exceptions are halo multiplayer and adobe products.
Linux is calling for quite a while, but as a PC gamer it is sadly not yet viable.
I love my Steam Deck, but the number of games that run the same as they run on Windows is still limited.
 
I already upgraded my whole companies PC's to Windows 11 using MCT.bat script. There are other ways as well. This is not the hurdle that MS thinks it is.
 
I consider Windows 11 a downgrade from Windows 10.

Despite all the (in)security issues with Win11, my biggest complaint goes to simple things. Like:

1. Windows Explorer context menu is now shortened, but contains mostly options I don't need. I want the full menu, without the need for an extra click and accurate aiming, to get what I got in Windows 10 right away.

2. Stupid TaskBar is now always grouping the same apps. There's no way to switch that mode off, like it was in W10. So, instead of copying modern Linux desktops, where you can even rearrange the order of running apps in the task bar (even if they are of the same type), they went in an even more restricted direction. Do they even have beta testers?
 
What a piece of garbage and spyware OS Windows has become. I'm glad I dumped it for Linux back in 2012 and I've never looked back.

Think of all of the perfectly functioning computers that so many people are just going to add to the e-waste pile because of this.

To emphasize my point, I'm currently using a desktop PC with a 5th gen Intel CPU which is running OpenSUSe Tumbleweed and it's running just fine.
 
It's great though, if you want to avoid their dumpster fire of an OS just turn off TPM and you are good to go.
Agreed, I started doing the same since recent BIOS updates have started to turn TPM on by default.
To emphasize my point, I'm currently using a desktop PC with a 5th gen Intel CPU which is running OpenSUSe Tumbleweed and it's running just fine.
Honestly I think that a 5th gen would run Windows pretty much fine as long as you have at least 8GB of RAM and ideally an SSD.
Windows 11 isn't an OS - its a surveillance platform.
Microsoft is just trying to catch up with what Google and Apple already do, collecting and selling your data; but honestly I would be more concerned about the surveillance platforms that are much less transparent than your OS, like AMD's PSP, Intel's ME and Microsoft's new Pluton.
 
If anyone wants my upgrade, free of charge, they can have it, no seriously, be my guest :)

Sick & tired of being pestered about it every-time Windows Update does it thing.

How many times do I have to click 'not now' before they get the message..
I have only been asked twice, once when Win 11 was released and for a second time today.
 
So? Why would I wanna install the latest OS on CPUs that are AT LEAST half a decade old? (the unsupported CPUs start at Ryzen 1xxx and Intel Kaby Lake, both came out in 2017).

By the time Windows 10 goes EOL, those are gonna be 8 years old CPUs.

Upgrade, or switch to something else. But if you expect a current Linux distro to be "smooth" on decade-old hardware, you're in for some unpleasant surprise. Ubuntu provides 10 years for LTS releases, which happens to be the same as that of Windows 10 (it was released in 2015 and will be supported till 2025).

If you think a 10 years old Ubuntu LTS release is nice to use, once again, you're in for some unpleasant surprises. Most of the 3rd party software will NOT be available, period.

Old hardware = old software. That's how it's always been, that's how it'll always be. Deal with it. Get a new CPU/mobo/ram, or enjoy your sluggish old system.
 
To emphasize my point, I'm currently using a desktop PC with a 5th gen Intel CPU which is running OpenSUSe Tumbleweed and it's running just fine.
Oh I'm sure it's "fine". People have different definitions of the term "fine" though.

A 5th gen Intel mobile i7's performance is comparable to (or below) my fanless 10W Goldmont Plus mini ITX HTPC. It's by no means "fine". 4K YouTube is definitely a challenge, especially in 60 FPS. It's tolerable in 1080p, not "fine". Those are also 5 years old now, and are overdue for a replacement, except for the fact that ATM there's no replacement on the market rofl. Intel's been teasing us with Tremont for like 3 years now. Now they finally announced the Gigabyte N5105I H, but it's the definition of a paper launch, it's nowhere to be seen yet.

TBF I much prefer Linux for development stuff, but the lack of official OneDrive/Gdrive makes it a dealbreaker for my personal computing needs. No, I'm not gonna switch to Dropbox, their pricing is ridiculous. And also worse gaming support. Most of the time you can hack together something, but often it's jittery or some other issues occur.
 
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