Windows 11

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Today Microsoft announced the next version of Windows, Windows 11.

I’ve been a member of the Insider Program since 2015, so recently I started seeing the new Sun Valley UI changes showing up in the 21H2 preview builds flighted to my home PC. New, flatter, more colorful icons, mostly:

Sun Valley in Windows Explorer

Sun Valley in Windows Explorer

An early build of Windows 11 was leaked last week, and while in the past I’ve installed early preview releases (like Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10) on spare hardware, I didn’t have any lying around this time so I spun it up in a virtual machine instead.

I haven’t had a lot of time to mess around with it, though. But at today’s event they also announced a formal release for Insiders should be coming out on June 30. Unfortunately, the PC Health Check app says my 5-year old Intel NUC can’t run Windows 11 … presumably due to the TPM 2.0 requirement.

sorry, this NUC can't run Windows 11

sorry, this NUC can’t run Windows 11

That didn’t seem to stop it from running in the VM, but it looks like unless that changes before the final release later this year, I might be looking to build a new desktop. Until then, it looks like I might have just keep it virtualized.

5 Comments

  1. The first Insider Preview was released yesterday and Microsoft said that Insiders already in the Dev channel would be able to upgrade despite not meeting the new requirements. However, this means that at the end of the preview builds, when Windows 11 is officially released, folks with unsupported hardware (like myself) would need to do a clean install of Windows 10.

    I’m still deciding if I want to deal with that, but in the meantime I noticed the Insider Preview update had been pushed to my PC, but failed to install. Apparently I’m not the only one having issues:

    Windows 11 preview build installs failing due to system requirements

    So that’s given me a reprieve until I decide if I want to proceed with flighting this on my every day home PC. I haven’t shied from this in the past, but usually I was able to stay on the new release at the end. Re-imaging and starting over with a fresh install of Windows 10 isn’t the end of the world, and maybe a clean install would be good for me, but still not sure I want to deal with that in a few months once Windows 11 is released.

    Additionally, the PC Health Check app has been pulled since it “wasn’t quite ready.”

    Microsoft acknowledges the Windows 11 PC Health Check was ‘not fully prepared’

    Not quite a smooth rollout for the Insider Program …

  2. My PC is still trying (and failing) to install the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview build (10.0.22000.65) with a 0xc1900101 error. I see other reports of this around the internet. Sometimes removing a driver works, sometimes uninstalling an app or device. I’ve tried a few different things without luck so I’ve sent in feedback via the Feedback Hub. At this point I’m giving up …

  3. For the past month I’ve been trying to install the Windows 11 Insider Preview on my NUC, but it just kept failing with the same error. I’ve been participating in this thread in the Microsoft Community but nothing I’ve tried helped.

    Then this past week, Microsoft released an ISO download of the Windows 11 Insider Preview so I decided to give it another shot. After disabling all non-Microsoft startup programs and services, I was able to successfully upgrade to build 22000.132! Next I used Windows Update to get on the current dev channel build (22000.160). Then I turned all of the startup programs and services back on (one-by-one) and now I’ve got a successful upgrade to Windows 11 running with all of my stuff like it was in Windows 10. Finally!

    Windows 11 about dialog

    Rounded corners, and the centered taskbar. 🙂

    Windows 11 desktop

    Of course, it’s still warning that my PC doesn’t meet the requirements, which means when the Insider Preview is done, I’ll have to do a clean install of Windows 10:

    Windows 11 unsupported hardware warning

    But I’ll worry about that later … maybe it’s time to build a new desktop PC later this year anyway.

  4. Windows 11 has been out for two weeks and so far, no problems with my PC staying in the beta channel and getting releases.

    This week, Microsoft released the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) to the beta channel, which allows Android apps to be run on a Windows PC (similar to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) which was introduced in Windows 10).

    Currently, only the Amazon App Store is available, which is installed through the Windows Store:

    First, though, this installs the WSA:

    Then launches it:

    And finally the App Store runs:

    So far I’ve just installed the Kindle app:

    Most of the other available apps are just kids games, so I’ll have to wait and see if more useful apps are posted to try out.

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