I’ve had a couple people ask me about upgrading to Windows 11, and I have a process to do an in-place update -- meaning it preserves all files and applications -- so I decided to write this down to have a clear instruction guide.

What this is Not

TL;DR: This is no shortcut TL;DR here.
If you’re not willing to read it all, I suggest you don’t bother.
If you don’t understand what you’re doing, I suggest you don’t bother.

If you’re not familiar and comfortable with changing BIOS options or changing an SSD, I suggest you don’t bother either.

I’ve updated 5 machines using the steps listed below so I’m confident I know what I’m doing. But I’m not claiming it’s an easy nor obvious nor quick process at all. It’s neither of these things.

If you need a lazy one-click do-it-all-for-me thingy, this guide is not for you. Try something like Flyoobe at your own risk -- I haven’t tried it so I’m not going to claim anything for or against it, nor even link to it. Just google it.

Also just to state the obvious, if you don’t want to put in the effort, then you don’t have to. You can either just keep running Windows 10, or get a new machine with Windows 11. After all, that’s what MS wants you to do.

High Level Summary

To do a successful update to Windows 11 in-place, we need the following steps:

1. Examine the system: CPU, TPM, disk mode.
2. Absolutely do a backup clone of the main drive and verify it.
3. Enable TPM if needed.
4. Perform an MBR to GPT disk conversion if needed.
5. Switch the BIOS to UEFI if needed.
6. Finally install Windows 11 in “unsupported” mode.

Let’s detail these steps below one by one.

Examining the System

That’s the easy part. “knowing is half the battle”, and we need to know a few things.

Open the following tool:

• Windows Start Menu > search for “System Information” > Run as Administrator

and note the following details:

• System Summary > Processor (e.g. “Intel Core i5-6600” etc.)
• System Summary > BIOS Mode (e.g. “Legacy” or “UEFI”)
• System Summary > Secure Boot state.

Check the CPU:

• If your CPU is an 8th gen (Intel 8xxx), then Windows 11 is supported without doing any tricks.
• If your CPU is a 6th or 7th gen (Intel 6xxx or 7xxx), then Windows 11 can still be installed if the other parts of the machine are set up as needed.
• If it’s an earlier CPU like an Intel gen 4th or 5th, forget it. Windows 11 will never work on it because it requires some CPU instructions that did not exist in the CPU back then.

I know nothing of modern AMD processors so I can’t say what works or doesn’t for them.

Check the BIOS Mode:

• That’s either “Legacy” or “UEFI”.
• If it’s “UEFI”, good news, you don’t have to deal with it.
• If it’s “Legacy”, we’ll need to change it to UEFI mode later. Don’t change it right away or the machine won’t boot anymore.

Check the Secure Boot state:

• That can be “Unsupported”, “Supported”, or “Enabled”.
• Windows 11 requires it to be at least supported. It doesn’t have to be enabled.
• If Secure Boot is Unsupported, Windows 11 will never work on that machine.

Check the System Disk partition style:

• Open PowerShell
• Run the command “Get-Disk”.
• This will clearly indicate the model number and the “Partition Style” of the main drive -- Windows is typically Disk 0 (a.k.a. C:).
• If the Windows system drive has a “GPT” partition style, we’re good and there’s nothing to change.
• If the Windows system drive has an “MBR” partition style, we’ll need to change it later as this is a legacy feature that Windows 11 voluntarily does not support.

Check the TPM mode:

• Open the following tool:
• Windows Start menu > search for “tpm.msc” > Run as Administrator
• Windows 11 needs at least a TPM 1.2 or ideally a TPM 2.0.
• Ideally this tool would indicate “The TPM is ready for use” and indicate a TPM version number (1.2 or 2.0).
• If this tool says “Compatible TPM cannot be found”, it’s possible there is a TPM chip which is disabled in the BIOS.
• Reboot in the BIOS (*) and check if there’s a TPM option you can enable (typically under “security”).
• If there is, enable it and check again using “tpm.msc”. There’s no downside to enabling this, Windows 10 will run just the same with it.

So at this point, you should have a feel of whether Windows 11 can potentially run on this computer or laptop at all:

• Is the CPU modern enough? (e.g. Intel 6th gen or better).
• Is there a TPM chip that you have actually enabled?
• Is the Secure Boot mode available? (doesn’t have to be enabled)

If the answer is no to any of the above, don’t bother continuing.

How to Reboot in the BIOS

(* Yep I didn’t indicate “how to reboot in the BIOS” above.)

That’s not a mistake. I assume you know. If you have never dealt with the computer BIOS before, now may not be the time to get started.

But I’ll tell you how anyway. Open Windows > Settings and search for “Advanced Startup”. The Windows 10 settings have a “Restart now” button under the “Advanced Startup” options. That brings you to some cryptic blue screens with choices and you need to carefully select the option to go change the UEFI settings -- and be careful not to select e.g. the one that wipes Windows. If unsure, google it.

Performing a Main Disk Backup

The reason I do in-place updates of Windows 10 to 11 is because I hate having to reinstall the machine if something goes wrong.

Thus my absolute primary requirement is to have an entire duplicate of the Windows 10 drive that boots and have verified that I can boot from it.

Yes it’s extra work, but without that, it’s just flying without a protection net. If you’re willing to lose all your data, why make extra work to preserve it when you could just install a fresh Windows 11 from scratch?

The way I do entire system drive backups is easy yet requires a bit of extra hardware.

First, figure the size of the C: drive where Windows is installed:

• Windows Start menu > search for “Computer Management” > Run as Administrator.
• Expand Storage > Disk Management.
• Disk 0 is generally the system drive.
• The size reflected in the Disk Management is the formatted size. The real drive has a higher capacity than the formatted size.
• Right click Disk 0 > Properties > General > note the model number.
• That gives us the exact size of the drive.
• For example, I have a Crucial CT1000MX500SSD1… That’s a “1TB” drive, even though the Disk 0 is listed in Windows as “931 GB” (that’s the formatted size).

My technique is simple and brutal:

• I buy an exact duplicate of the system drive (same brand, same model, same capacity, no less, no more).
• I get an SSD NVMe/NGFF external adapter, namely this Sabrent USB 3.2 Type-C M.2 NVMe.
• I perform an entire clone copy of the system drive using DiskGenius.

To duplicate the system drive:

• Download and install DiskGenius V5.6.
• Reboot the system and use airplane mode (to have a maximum of apps closed).
• In DiskGenius, select HD0 > OS Migration
• Target disk: Select the external NVMe or NGFF SSD on the external USB-C enclosure.
• Check “prevent system from sleeping during execution”
• Make sure “USB bootable” is not checked.
• Perform the copy as-is, no need to reboot in the WinRE mode.
• The time needed to make the backup depends on the size of the disk and the USB cable. A USB C-to-C of 1 TB takes about 30 minutes. The same with a USB A-to-C cable takes about 2 hours.
• Do not use any other option from DiskGenius except that “OS Migration” one. A number of them can render the system disk unbootable if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Note that above we used the “Computer Management” console to get the disk model and size. You can also get it from DiskGenius. Both will also indicate whether the disk uses a GPT or an MBR partition style.

Whilst in DiskGenius, note the number of partitions on the system drive. That will become useful in the next step.

Now the “boring” part: shutdown the computer/laptop, and replace the existing system drive with the new system backup.

On the Lenovo T460/ T480 laptops that I use, this requires going into the BIOS and checking the BIOS option Config > Power > “Disable Built-in Battery” ⇒ Hit Enter. The laptop will TURN OFF, and then disconnect the AC power cable if connected. Only then it is safe to unscrew the back and exchange the SSD.

Note that this step is not optional: it is the entire requirement that ensures that the system copy is in fact properly executed. It’s tempting to just assume the “copy is good”, but skipping this step makes the entire copy moot as it provides no guarantee that a proper clone has been executed.

Moreover, this allows me to then perform the Windows 11 update on the new cloned drive, ensuring that I have an entirely pristine original system disk in case I want to revert to the previous Windows 10 system. I’m going to keep that original system disk pristine as long as we’re in that transition process, and often I even keep it longer like a month or so just in case.

Convert System Disk from MBR to GPT

If the main system disk is already using a “GPT” partition style, you can skip this entire section and go to the next one.

If we have noticed above that the system disk uses the legacy “MBR” partition style, we need to convert it to the newer “GPT” mode.

That’s the kind of operation that can make the system disk entirely unbootable if not done properly. Thus it is mandatory to only perform it on the backup we created in the previous step.

Although DiskGenius does have an option to convert the drive to the GTP partition style, I have never succeeded in making it work “in-place” ⇒ Do not use DiskGenius for that task.

The way I do it is by using the MBR2GPT tool that is present on the Windows 10 Repair disk. All the steps are detailed here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/mbr-to-gpt 

One downside is that this tool only works if the MBR contains 3 partitions, and it needs to be able to find around 512 MB of free space to shrink the main system partition.

We need a Windows 10 install disk, and by “disk” I mean a USB drive. If you don’t have one, it’s easy to make one:

• Go to the Microsoft Windows 10 site at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
• Download the “Windows 10 installation media creation tool”.
• Follow the instructions to flash it on a blank USB drive (it will erase everything).
• IIRC, it needs around 6 or 8 GB on the USB drive.
• A while ago I got a 5-pack of PNY 32 GB USB 3 flash drives just for that purpose (that way I have one to install Windows 10, one for Windows 11, one for Linux Debian, and one for Raspberry Pi’s Debian flavor).

Once you have that, boot the machine from the Windows 10 USB drive. On a Lenovo laptop, that requires using F12 to access the media boot selector:

• In the first screen, select the “Repair” option instead of “Install”.
• Then use “CMD” to get the command-prompt shell.

In the CMD shell:

> mbr2gpt /validate
> mbr2gpt /convert

The first command validates that all the disk information is as expected by the tool. If there’s a problem, it will clearly indicate it, but it won’t necessarily indicate what to do to fix it.

The typical issue I found is MBR2GPT reporting “MBR2GPT: cannot find OS partition”.

To solve that, still in the same CMD shell, run these commands:

> diskpart

• select disk 0
• select part 2 (the main Windows one)
• active         → this makes partition 2 active
• assign letter=c
• <exit diskpart, return to the shell>

> bcdboot c:\windows /s c:
> bootrec /fixmbr
> bootrec /scanos

Try the mbr2gpt /validate and mbr2gpt /convert again.

Generally speaking, just google any error you find; someone has had the same problem before.

Now assuming the entire operation has worked, “diskpart” can clearly indicate whether the disk is in GTP partition style.

Final step: earlier, we checked whether the BIOS Mode was “Legacy” or “UEFI”. That’s where it matters now. If the BIOS is still in “Legacy” mode, it won’t be able to boot off a GPT drive. It needs to be in the “UEFI” mode for that. So:

• Exit the Windows 10 repair mode.
• Boot back into the BIOS.
• Find the category that has the BIOS mode.
• On the Lenovo T460 / T480, that’s in the last category named “Startup” under “Boot Priority”.
• Change it to “UEFI only”.
• Save and reboot.

We should be able to boot back into Windows 10, but this time with a disk using the GPT partition style with an UEFI BIOS.

Remember we did all these MBR/GTP changes on the duplicate backup disk on purpose: if there’s a problem, we can go back to the previous pristine original disk. However if we want to revert and use the original disk and it had an MBR partition style, we’ll also need to change the BIOS mode to Legacy -- an UEFI BIOS cannot boot off an MBR disk.

Windows 11 Install on an Intel 8th Gen CPU

The steps before were all about making the machine “compatible” with Windows 11:

• we needed an TPM (enabled in the BIOS as needed),
• we needed an UEFI BIOS (also enabled in the BIOS),
• and we needed a GTP partition style disk.

If we have all that and an Intel 8th Gen CPU or better, we have a machine that is all ready to install Windows 11 the easy way as it was intended to be installed.

Just to be clear, I would still recommend making a backup copy of the system drive as explained above. That’s not a gimmick. It’s my guarantee that I can always revert back to the pristine Window 10 disk if anything goes wrong.

The simplest way to force the install on Windows 11 on compatible hardware is to download the “Installation Assistant” from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11 and follow the steps.

That’s it. No drama. You’re done.

Once in Windows 11, reconfigure the taskbar to something more decent (see below).

Windows 11 Install on an Intel 6th or 7th Gen CPU

The steps before were all about making the machine “compatible” with Windows 11:

• we needed an TPM (enabled in the BIOS as needed),
• we needed an UEFI BIOS (also enabled in the BIOS),
• and we needed a GTP partition style disk.

But because the CPU is not “officially supported”, we have a tiny bit more work than the “official” support in the previous section, yet really not that much, and all the steps here are actually extracted from this zdnet article.

And just to be double extra clear, I would still recommend making a backup copy of the system drive as explained above. That’s not a gimmick. It’s my guarantee that I can always revert back to the pristine Window 10 disk if anything goes wrong.

Preliminaries:

• Apply updates to Windows 10 first.
• Go to Windows Settings > Windows Updates and ensure you have the most up to date version of Windows 10 already installed.
• Do not install the undesirable “preview” updates, just install the regular ones.
• Make sure to have a full and tested copy of the drive, and work on a backup/clone.
• If needed, do the MBR to GPT conversion as described above.
• If needed, switch the BIOS to UEFI (Start > UEFI Only) as explained above.
• Run System Information (aka msinfo32):
• System Summary > BIOS Mode ⇒ Must be UEFI
• Secure Boot must be supported, but doesn’t need to be enabled, as explained above.
• BIOS > Security > Secure Boot > Disabled
• Validate the TPM using tpm.msc (Win-R) ⇒ TPM should be ready to use, with version 2.0.
• If needed, remember to enable it in the BIOS!
• BIOS > Security > Security Chip > Intel PTT for a TPM 2.0.

OK now we’re ready to bypass the CPU check:

• Open regedit32 as administrator.
• Navigate to the registry for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup
• If there’s no key “MoSetup” there, create it:
• Right click on “Setup” in the folder list > New > Key
• Create Key “MoSetup”
• Navigate to the registry for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup
• Right click on “MoSetup” > New > DWORD
• Name: AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU
• Value: 1
• Double check and triple check the spelling of that name above. It’s “Upgrades” plural, and “Unsupported” with 2 “p”, and “TPMOrCPU” exactly as-is at the end.

The astute reader will notice it’s possible to install Windows 11 without TPM enabled. That’s right. However TPM 1.2 is an old thing. If your BIOS does not even have that, honestly you’re better off not trying to run Windows 11. YMMV.

Now we can install Windows 11:

• Grab a copy of Windows 11 Downloadable ISO (6 GB) from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11
• Note that you don’t want “Create Windows 11 Installation Media”.
• You want the “Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices” category.
• Do NOT “burn” the ISO to a DVD nor to a USB flash drive.
• Once the ISO is downloaded, double-click the ISO file to mount it as a virtual drive.
• Run the setup.exe directly from the mounted ISO.
• The setup will take forever to perform a few updates.
• By “forever” I mean literally 2-3 hours with absolutely no progress bar movement.
• Seems like it needs to be online to do that update.
• Eventually the setup will indicate the platform isn’t supported but still offer to continue. Just click “Accept” to continue.
• If instead you get an “unsupported CPU message” with no “Accept” option, double check the registry key for exact spelling (e.g. “Upgrades” plural) or case-sensitiveness and value 1. It’s easy to make a typo in that silly name; I’ve done so twice already.
• The setup will proceed to install Windows 11, leaving all apps unchanged.
• This part of the install takes an hour or two.
• Once in Windows 11, reconfigure the taskbar to something more decent (see below).

And voila, a working in-place update to Windows 11.

That may sound like a lot of steps yet it’s honestly not so bad.

How to Make Windows 11 Instantly More Palatable

Once you upgrade in-place from Windows 10 to Windows 11, you’ll realize that it’s after all mostly… the same thing.

The only major change is that new taskbar, and it’s IMHO not a good default. It’s designed to be MacOS-like. So here’s how to make it look like a good ol’ Windows 10 taskbar:

• Right click on Task bar > Taskbar Settings
• Search: Hide
• Task view: Off
• Widgets: Off
• Pen Menu: Off
• Expand “Taskbar behaviors”
• Taskbar Alignment: Left        ← the key setting to change here
• On the left pane, select “Personalization”
• Select Personalization > Colors:
• Choose your mode: Custom
• Choose your default Windows mode: Dark
• Choose your Default app mode: Light
• Show accent color on Start and Taskbar: On
• Show accent color on title bars and window borders: On
• Select Personalization > Background:
• Personalize your background: Picture.
• Change background image from that annoyingly in-your-face blue wave thingy to something more subtle.
• Select Personalization > Lock Screen:
• Disable that annoying “Get fun facts” (which are all but fun).
• Select an agreeable picture.
• Select Personalization > Start:
• Layout: Default
• Show most used apps: Off (YMMV)
• Show recommendations/notifications: all Off

And voila, Windows 11 now looks vaguely acceptable. Then of course, you can later lament once you realize they removed the most essential taskbar feature → the vertical taskbar on the side of the screen. \o/ Pourquoi tant de haine ?!

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