Upgrade to Windows 11 23H2 on unsupported hardware

Since Microsoft released Windows 11 in October 2021, there has been some hardware limitations. These limitations include a limited list of processor support, the requirement for secure boot and a TPM 2.0 module. In case one of these requirements on your machine is not met, you have an unsupported system and without any workarounds, you will not be able to install Windows 11 on your machine.

As I did some earlier posts on getting Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, this one is no different and covers performing a fresh installation or upgrading from Windows 10 or another Windows 11 version to Windows 11 23H2 on unsupported hardware .

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Install Windows 11 on a Mac Pro 1,1 or 2,1

The last official Apple-supported operating system for the classic Mac pro 1,1 or 2,1 is OS X Lion. With some workarounds it is possible to go up to OS X El Capitan but that’s where it stops. Since El Capitan got released back in 2015, most software developers dropped support for it a while ago and as good as all popular tools and applications are no longer running on El Capitan. As a valid alternative to macOS, Windows is an option here. This post covers how to get Windows 11 on your Mac Pro 1,1 or 2,2, which will allow you to install the latest software versions and get the latest patches and updates.

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Upgrade to Windows 11 22H2 on unsupported hardware

Since a few weeks, Microsoft has released their 22H2 update. This update has some new features and bugfixes. With the introduction of Windows 11 also came some restrictions on supported hardware. Like the need for a fairly recent CPU, TPM 2.0 and secure boot. The 22H2 update seems to change some things that could prevent to work around the hardware checks. The original method to upgrade from Windows 10 to 11 on unsupported hardware is no longer working and also on Windows 11 installations that used any of the workarounds to overcome the hardware check, the 22H2 update will most likely not be offered through Windows update. In this article I will describe alternative and how to still upgrade Windows 11 22H2 on unsupported hardware, either running already on Windows 11 or from Windows 10.

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How to avoid a Microsoft account on Windows 11

For some time now, Microsoft has been pretty intrusive about pushing the use of a Microsoft account on Windows-based PCs. Over the time, it became harder and harder to setup or upgrade Windows using a local account or even without internet access. Although having a Microsoft account could have its advantages, many people, including myself, prefer to make that decision on their own. In this post, I’ll explain, for the various Windows 11 versions like Home or Pro, how you can work around the need for a Microsoft account and how you can switch back to a local account in case you started using one already.

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Create a bootable Windows 11 installation USB on macOS

It’s fairly easy to create bootable USB installation media for Windows 11 when using Microsoft’s Media creation tool from Windows. Unfortunately this tool is not available for macOS. This post explains you how to do this without using a Windows-based PC or VM and without using BootCamp assistant. This can come in handy when trying to install Windows on your Mac or PC or when there is simply only an Apple Mac available and you need to boot the Windows installer for various reasons. The media will work to install Windows 11 on both a Mac or regular PC.

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Run Windows 98 SE on a modern Mac (with M1)

Running Windows 98 today seems like a strange thing to do. First of all, it can’t run natively on a modern 64 bit CPU and definitely not on an M1-based Mac. Secondly, it’s seriously outdated and is considered useless for today’s productivity. Thinking about it further, you will see that it opens a whole new old world. There are so much high quality applications and especially games out there, which you can’t run directly on a modern PC and for sure not on a Mac. By using emulation with UTM and QEMU, we can install Windows 98 SE on a new Mac and are able to revive that past experience and fun you had before. This article covers installing and configuring Windows 98 SE on a MacBook M1 by using UTM.

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Install Windows 11 ARM on M1-based Macs with UTM

One subject that comes up very often is the ability to run Windows on an M1-based Mac. Even though many people swear by macOS, Bootcamp and Windows on a Mac still seems to be a widely used option. As these M1-based devices are using a different architecture: ARM, they are not compatible with Mac’s previous and most-used architecture for Windows-based computers: x86. That means that in order to run Windows on an M1 device, you basically have two options: Use an ARM-based version of Windows or emulate an x86-64 based machine and run a regular Windows version. For this article, I will get Windows 11 for ARM running on an M1 MacBook Air by using UTM.

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Fix issue with empty Windows Security app after upgrade to Windows 11

After performing an upgrade to Windows 11, coming from Windows 10, it looks like some users are getting an issue with Windows Security. The symptoms are an empty Windows Security application, only displaying “Security at a glance”. When navigating to Settings – Windows Security, the menu will hang and only closing it works. This is caused by the service “Windows Security Service” or SecurityHealthService.exe that is not running and is stopping immediately when trying to start it. I’m not sure of the cause but did find a way to fix it, which I will describe in this article.

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Install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware

Windows 11 has been released some time ago now and comes with some new hardware requirements like the need for TPM 2.0 and secure boot. Also, some older processors are no longer supported even though they should be perfectly capable of running the OS. In case your system does not meet one of these requirements, you will not be able to install Windows 11 in a supported way. This article explains you how to work around those limitations and install Windows 11 on an unsupported machine. The methods used here also work for the 22H2 update.

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Install Windows 11 natively on your Mac without Parallels or BootCamp Assistant

As most know, it is possible, and quite easy, to install Windows 10 on your x86-based Mac. Wether it’s a Mac Pro, iMac, Mac mini or Macbook. Now, as Windows 11 has some specific hardware requirements like TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot, you will not pass the hardware check. An unmodified installation will fail to get installed exactly due to this. In this article, I’ll explain how to get around these limitations and to get Windows 11 properly installed and working on your Mac.

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Create a bootable Windows 10 installation USB on macOS

It’s fairly easy to create bootable USB installation media for Windows 10 when using Microsoft’s Media creation tool. Unfortunately this tool is not available for macOS. This post explains you how to do this without using a Windows-based PC or VM and without using BootCamp assistant. This can come in handy when trying to install Windows on your mac or when there is simply only an Apple Mac available and you need to boot the Windows installer for various reasons.

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Install Windows 10 on a MacBook (Air) 2019/2020 with T2 chip

For quite a long time now, Apple supports running Windows on your x86-based MacBook. The supported method is to use BootCamp Assistant. Although this does work in a lot of cases, there might be reasons to manually install Windows on your MacBook. For example if you want to get completely rid of macOS. Other reasons could be dropped support for older MacBooks, the ability to use a custom/modified Windows installation or if you want to install on an external drive. This post explains how to install Windows on a 2019/2020 MacBook (Air) equiped with a T2 security chip without using BootCamp Assistant.

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BIOS or SPI programming on Windows or Linux using a CH341a MiniProgrammer

Without a working BIOS, even the most powerful hardware can’t be brought to life. In some rare cases, the BIOS chip in your system can become corrupt, which will return your system completely unusable. To fix this situation but also for other reasons like simply a backup, tuning, modding or enabling hidden features, flashing your BIOS ROM is interesting. Recently I got in the situation where the BIOS chip in my Lenovo X1 Yoga got corrupt. To fix this, I purchased the CH341a MiniProgrammer. In this post you can find the documented steps I took to reflash the BIOS and bring my laptop back to life.

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Install and use Zabbix 3.2 on CentOS 7 or RHEL 7

Zabbix is a monitoring tool which is widely used in all kinds of environments. Zabbix is very flexible, information can be retrieved using HTTP/SNMP or by installing a Zabbix agent on the machines to monitor, and allows a lot of customisation. Unfortunately this also means that the learning curve can be rather high. This post will go a little deeper into the installation process and the first steps in Zabbix.

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Move a guest from VMWare ESX to oVirt or RHEV

When working in an environment where you have both a VMWare hypervisor and an oVirt or RHEV hypservisor or you want to migrate away from VMWare ESX to oVirt or RHEV, you will need a way to move or copy your current virtual machines from one to another. Unfortunately this can’t be done without downtime but at least it can be done. In this post I’ll try to explain how to successfully move a VM running on ESX or vCenter to an oVirt or Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization host.

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Terse, unterse and transfer datasets between z/OS and other platforms via FTP

Tersing files can be compared to tarring, zipping, rarring files on the x86 platform. It allows you to store a file or multiple files (members) in an archive. The archive is easily transferable and when the data is unpacked, it is guaranteed to be the same as the original source. Especially when transferring PDS’es and variable blocked (VB, VBS) datasets, this is important. Transferring normal datasets over FTP through other platforms from z/OS can be challenging an this article should provide some help.

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Execute queries on a Microsoft SQL server from the Linux CLI with ODBC and Kerberos authentication

A while ago, the Windows-world and the Linux-world were not the best friends in communicating with each other. Especially not when it came to proprietary stuff like Microsoft SQL server. in contrast to everybody’s expectations, somewhere end 2011, beginning 2012, Microsoft released an ODBC driver for SQL server for Linux. This driver allows executing queries from a Linux machine to a Microsoft SQL Server database. The driver can be used in combination with Kerberos tickets and AD authentication to execute queries.

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Mount Windows (CIFS) shares on Linux with credentials in a secure way

In almost all cases, when mounting a CIFS-share on a Linux host, you will need to supply some credentials. Either you could enter the credentials by hand every time you need the share or add the credentials to /etc/fstab to automatically mount the share. Entering the password manually is secure but not comfortable, leaving the password in /etc/fstab is comfortable but not secure since the file /etc/fstab is world readable.

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Install and use CentOS 7 or RHEL 7 as KVM virtualization host

When thinking about virtualization, everybody immediately thinks about VMWare. And it must be said, the product they offer is very decent but also comes with a “decent” price. As an alternative, it’s worth looking into KVM for your virtualization. As with the VMWare product range, KVM offers full virtualization and it can compete with VMWare regarding stability and performance.

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