Windows 11: Unsupported Hardware

One of the challenges when installing Windows 11 is meeting the hardware requirements, the download itself is quite easy.

Installing Windows 11 comes with requirements such as having a compliant CPU, having secure boot and TPM 2.0.

There are many ways in which you could bypass these if you run so called unsupported hardware.

In my case the computer didn't meet any of the requirements mentioned above, but the saving grace is perhaps a good amount of storage and an i7 processor. Things could be worse I guess. 

After trying some registry modifications I was close to giving up, but eventually I found a way that worked. My HP Elitebook 2540p managed to get Windows 11 installed, despite 4GB of ram it is running surprisingly well. Even the battery life seems to have gotten better.

So this is how I installed Windows 11 on my 2540p:

 

First download the English International version of the ISO here.

 

I made sure I had downloaded the latest Rufus software to create my USB and I used a USB-drive with at least 32GB of storage. 

In Rufus I then had the option to bypass TPM check and the like, so I used these options to ignore the requirements that kept me from just installing the regular Windows 11 ISO.

After flashing the drive with the modified ISO I could then install it on my PC the usual way, but I had to activate UEFI. After that I only had to configure Windows the usual way.

Using a legit Windows activation key I was then able to use the computer normally and even perform Windows Updates. There wasn't really any bugs and only some niche settings were locked due to the old age of the computer. To some degree I even experienced better user experience with Win11 than Win10.

Live OS: Running Kali Linux from USB

When you run an operative system from a USB drive it can be referred to as running a live OS.

The OS then uses the hardware from the computer and can also save settings on the USB. When your data is saved between reboots it is called persistence. 

I used the Kali Linux Live ISO from this page. It is a 64-bit version.

First time I attempted to flash the .iso I used the tool Balena Etcher, it worked just fine until I tried to download and update packages using sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade as it was complaining about storage. I was a bit perplexed as I had at least 50 gb available.

After a while I figured out that the flashed Kali Linux Live image only was partitioned to a small part of the USB drive.

So I downloaded and ran Rufus instead, which allowed me to reserve even more "usable" space for my OS on the USB drive. This time I started running the updates and the upgrades in the terminal and it worked perfectly fine.

With both Balena Etcher and Rufus my settings were saved as I changed the looks of the OS. Keep in mind that when you boot from the USB you will get the option to start a session which will not be saved, or a persistent session which will indeed save your changes.

When you do live booting from a USB, you sometimes need to turn of the secure boot in your computers BIOS. You do that by entering the BIOS/UEFI as the computer starts up and asks you to press one of the f-keys.

Apart from now being able to use almost any computer, only by carrying your USB with you, you can also access the files that you would typically access from Windows. Thus allowing you to rescue files for example if the Windows system breaks down.

Currently I keep a USB with software that is good to have, such as a few browsers, PowerShell 7 and the like, along with a drive containing a Kali ISO that can be installed on a computer and a drive with Kali for live booting.