Microsoft admits it marked ineligible PCs for Windows 11 upgrades

Every time there’s a shiny new version of Windows on the horizon, you’ll see them. A horde of stickers. A sea of stickers. A veritable galaxy of stickers on laptops and desktops all over shelves in digital and physical retailers, with “Windows XX upgrade available” printed on them. And, without fail, actually securing that upgrade can be a bit of a headache. So, it is with some PCs sold with promised upgrades to Windows 11 which, it turns out, aren’t coming because the hardware can’t officially handle it.

The company said as much on the latest update to the Known Issues section of the Windows 11 21H2 release health post, marked “resolved” at the top of the issue list.

Some hardware ineligible Windows 10 and Windows 11, version 21H2 devices were offered an inaccurate upgrade to Windows 11. These ineligible devices did not meet the minimum requirements to run Window [sic] 11. Devices that experienced this issue were not able to complete the upgrade installation process.

According to the notes spotted by Tom’s Hardware, affected versions include Windows 10 22H2, 21H2, and 20H2, indicating that this is a problem for at least some PCs sold up to a couple of years ago.

Microsoft posted this information in a support changelog and not, say, a press release, indicating that anyone who has a problem with their upgrades suddenly failing via Windows Update can go suck eggs. (That’s not a direct quote.) Users who are set on using Windows 11 will have to upgrade their hardware or search for a workaround.

Speaking of which, Windows seems to be having a collection of embarrassing issues surrounding the W11 upgrade as of late. Last week watermark messages started appearing on Windows 11 copies running on hardware that doesn’t officially support the newer version. This, despite the fact that it’s been shown that Windows 11 can run on much lighter systems than previously suspected, albeit without the official blessing of Microsoft.

In short, the upgrade process to Windows 11 (and the eligibility of hardware for said upgrade) remains a murky mess more than a year after the operating system’s full public release.