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How to upgrade to Windows 11 for free in 2026?
Running an older PC that's been on Windows 10 for years and starting to think about upgrading to Windows 11 before support runs out. The machine works perfectly fine for everyday tasks so replacing i...
If you want to know how to upgrade to Windows 11 on an older PC that fails the TPM 2.0 and CPU checks, one of the most reliable and completely free methods is to create a modified Windows 11 ISO. This approach involves taking Microsoft's official installation files and making specific changes that disable the hardware requirement checks before you even begin the upgrade.
The beauty of this method is that once you create the modified ISO, you can use it repeatedly on multiple older computers. The modifications are made to the installation media itself. This keeps your actual Windows 10 installation clean and untouched until you are ready to upgrade.
How to upgrade to Windows 11:
- Get the Windows 11 ISO.
- Mount the ISO and locate the appraiserres, dll file, which is responsible for hardware checks.
- Replace or remove appraiserres.dll with a modified version that skips hardware validation.
- Use an existing ISO burner or disk creation method (e.g., dd in Linux, or manually copying files to USB) to create a bootable installer.
- Boot from the modified ISO and install Windows 11.