If you've been hearing tweets about wanting to run Windows 11 on PCs that don't meet the specs required for Microsoft's latest OS, I have some bad news: a bug that indicates that ineligible Windows 10 machines can receive Windows 11 upgrades has been squashed.

This all stems from discussions on Twitter (opens in new tab) and Reddit (opens in new tab), which pointed out that pings for Windows 11 upgrades were being sent to devices that appeared to be unsupported. These were limited to members of the Windows 11 Insiders program, but still had the potential to raise expectations that Windows 11 might not have particularly stringent hardware requirements.

Unfortunately, that was not the case and the upgrade prompt was simply a bug.

"Some hardware ineligible Windows 10 and Windows 11, version 21H2 devices were offered an incorrect upgrade to Windows 11," Microsoft explained (opens in new tab). 'These ineligible devices did not meet the minimum requirements to run Windows 11. Devices experiencing this issue were unable to complete the upgrade installation process.

Thus, if you are not using a desktop or laptop with the hardware required for Windows 11, you are out of luck regarding the upgrade. This requirement is related to some of the security systems built into Windows 11, which require specific hardware support in the processor in order to work properly.

There are tools that allow Windows 11 to run on lower spec machines, but that is not the best way to get the full Windows 11 experience.

So if you find yourself in a situation where you need a new machine to get Windows 11, we recommend checking out our list of the best laptops. Mini PCs like the Geekom Mini IT8 also make compact yet high-performance Windows 11 computers.

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