Has Microsoft lowered its Windows 11 eligibility criteria?
Mar 1
My main home PC is running Windows 10, and is about 6 years old now. Though it was of a very high specification when new, built for video editing and rendering, and still no slouch.
As such it lacked the TPM2 and processor generation required to qualify for 11 on release.
However... Yesterday (28th Feb 2023) on boot it gave me a full screen saying "Now Unlocked: You're eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 11"
I didn't proceed and decided to stick with 10 for now as I needed to submit a tax return in the 3 hours between then and midnight.. and I'm fine with 10.
1 answer
Accepted answer · original discussion
Mar 1
This is an ongoing thing, as described in the article Microsoft mistakenly offered Windows 11 upgrades to users with unsupported PCs:
“Some hardware ineligible Windows 10 and Windows 11, version 21H2 devices were offered an inaccurate upgrade to Windows 11,” Microsoft states in a support document spotted by The Verge. “These ineligible devices did not meet the minimum requirements to run Windows 11. Devices that experienced this issue were not able to complete the upgrade installation process.” Microsoft adds it resolved the issue the same day it was detected.
You should locate and use the "keep Windows 10" link, although it gets harder to spot with succeeding versions of the announcement. If you click the "Get it" button, the installation will just fail.
If you can't spot this link in the message, see Windows 10: Uncovering the Deception of the Windows 11 Upgrade Screen for advice.
1 question comment
Use comments to ask for clarification. Post a solution as an answer.
Mar 1