Windows 11 requirements testing application will advise you on what you are missing

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Windows 11 has quite complicated requirements for what hardware you need. The PC Health Check App will now show you if your computer has official support. It didn’t work very well at first, but now a patched version has been released and already shows in detail what is missing or you need to fix.

Again, there is the “popular” topic of the HW requirements of the new Windows 11 operating system. At first they looked quite threatening, in the meantime Microsoft eased a bit, but uncertainty remains (for example, there were rumors that officially unsupported hardware might not get updates). If you’re planning to upgrade, a new Microsoft Requirements Control application can now help you, telling you exactly what your PC is up to and not.

Microsoft also introduced the program when it first released its Windows 11 hardware requirements PC Health Check App (Czech Checking the status of a personal computer) with which you could verify whether your hardware is in the strict eye. But this application was not very useful, because most of the time it just said that the PC is not satisfactory, without saying exactly in which detail you have a problem. Thus, it did not help in trying to resolve the incompatibility.

The requirements of Windows 11 are quite complex. Probably the best known is the well – publicized requirement for TPM 2.0 (we discussed it in this article, where you will also learn how to easily turn on the BIOS on newer computersso there is no need to buy anything). In addition, there are common and quite trivial requirements for dual-core CPUs, RAM capacity and storage, against which there is nothing to object. So if you still don’t have a 32-bit system – Windows 11 is a hard 64-bit system for the first time, the 32-bit version is no longer there.

However, Microsoft has more problematic requirements: the computer / board must use UEFI firmware and Secure Boot must be enabled. And then there’s the thing that’s probably the biggest problem, even more so than TMP 2.0. Microsoft has established a list of supported processors, which more or less means you must have Intel Core 8th generation or later; from AMD you need the Ryzen generation 2000 (or even 3000 in the case of APU processors with integrated graphics). Computers with older processors will not be officially supported, although they would suit everything else.

More: What are the hardware requirements for Windows 11? The list of supported CPUs is absurdly small

The original application didn’t even say the proverbial thing about what the problem was with your configuration. Therefore, users often researched in vain what they were doing wrong, typically due to ignorance of the baked-in list of CPUs selected. After criticism, Microsoft stopped offering the application for download with the promise that it would improve it to provide more detailed information.

Requirements checking tool finally available

It took a long time, but now this new version of the PC Health Check App has finally been released here on the Microsoft website to Windows 11. You can download it directly at this link (this is the .msi file, run and click the installer like any other program).

When you open the PC Health Check after installation, just click on the “Check Now” button and you will receive a certificate. If you have everything done, a simple dialog box will pop up saying “My computer meets the requirements of Windows 11”, but if you want, you can also click on the details. This is what it looks like on a sufficiently new PC (with AMD Ryzen 5000).

If your PC does not meet any of the requirements, this time the application will open a detailed view (which is hidden behind the “Show all results” button with a 100% satisfactory finding). You should already see all the complications in detail in this overview. The first option “Secure Boot” in the Czech localization means support for Secure Boot and it probably also includes the use of UEFI firmware itself, which is also mandatory (legacy BIOS does not know Secure Boot), but the application does not list this item separately.

After TPM 2.0 support, the third place is whether your processor is on that list of supported processors or not. In a picture from a computer you may know from of this article, you can see what it looks like with an older PC where the CPU is not good enough (from the W11 developers’ point of view). So this information will probably be the most important for most of you.

If your processor is not on the list of supported, there is not much you can do about it, only in some cases it is possible to replace the processor on one in the list on desktop computers. For Ryzen 1000 and Ryzen 2000 with iGPU (Ryzen 3 2200G, Ryzen 5 2400G) it is possible to jump to one number of a newer generation, which is already compatible. For Core 6th and 7th generation, a board with an LGA 1151 socket and a 100 and 200 generation chipset usually does not support newer processors, although there are various difficult and risky “hacks” to run them. Also, AMD and Intel processors older than those listed cannot be upgraded to a suitable model. If you have a laptop, you can’t replace the processor at all.

You may notice that the unsupported processor is marked in red as the biggest evil, while the absence of TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot applications is indicated by a yellow icon. This is probably to point out that these problems are often solvable, because Secure Boot is often only deactivated in the firmware and can be turned on, and so is (f) TMP 2.0. Failure in these disciplines is therefore often quickly resolved.

The situation for unsupported processors (and computers) is still pending

What will happen to you / us if you have a non-compliant processor? That is not yet entirely certain. Microsoft has already said that if you run Windows 11 on such a computer, it will not prevent you from and Windows 11 can be used on it, only it will not be officially supported. So it is quite possible that in practice this list of selected CPUs and the resulting “fail” in the application controlling the requests will not stop you and it is not a problem.

However, there have also been unclear threats that such computers may not have automatic updates (fixes and security patches). Without them, you shouldn’t use the operating system (or at least not if you go online with it), so here we have to wait for the situation to turn color. However, if there are updates, everything is probably fine and Windows 11 on unsupported processors and computers should not be a problem to use.

It is also not yet certain whether the request control application is already fully reliable and whether, for example, it is not confused in some things. For example, we noticed that it does not list at least one item in its listing, namely whether you have a GPU (and its driver) that supports WDDM 2.0. This is among Microsoft’s requests, but if it checks this part of the application, it does not display the result. And neither on a PC with suitable graphics, nor on a PC that does not meet the WDDM 2.0 driver). However, it is possible that Microsoft will update the application again in the future and add to this.

The W11 will be released in two weeks

Windows 11 Edition is scheduled for October 5. and it’s pretty close (as a reminder: upgrading from Windows 10 is free). After this date, the upgrade will gradually be offered to computers that meet the requirements, but it will be phased over for many months, so the call / offer to upgrade to W11 may not arrive until mid-2022.

If your computer does not work, the only option will be a manual installation that you run using the Media Creation Tool. It will probably also work on a supported computer if you are impatient and want to update now and not wait for your Microsoft machine to be included in the distribution of automatically offered upgrades.

Source: Microsoft