Windows 11, TPMs, and mass machine replacement

MarkCup · Thursday at 9:38 AM

I'm being told that out of a total of 50+ Pcs we have here, I need to replace 35 of them because they're not compatible with Windows 11; the processors are not recent enough generation and/or they have no TPM.

Before I press the button on a £20k investment that I'd much rather not do right now...is there any way around this?

I've got people saying they know people that know people that have found a workaround...but beyond that the details become sketchy.

So CS, what's what? Is there a little known route through this that doesn't involve 35 brand new PCs?

Or have Microsoft really created an absolute f*** ton of waste electrical equipment with this change?

Gavin. · Thursday at 9:41 AM

In short yes, you can enter a couple of registry keys that stop the windows 11 install checking for a TPM module. However the machines won’t receive updates via windows update.

The Psychedelic Socialist · Thursday at 9:41 AM

MarkCup said:
I'm being told that out of a total of 50+ Pcs we have here, I need to replace 35 of them because they're not compatible with Windows 11; the processors are not recent enough generation and/or they have no TPM.

Before I press the button on a £20k investment that I'd much rather not do right now...is there any way around this?

I've got people saying they know people that know people that have found a workaround...but beyond that the details become sketchy.

So CS, what's what? Is there a little known route through this that doesn't involve 35 brand new PCs?

Or have Microsoft really created an absolute f*** ton of waste electrical equipment with this change?

Our group CTO (who knows his s**t) has simply told us that we're all getting new laptops before October. There was no suggestion of trying any of the workarounds.

My concern would be that anything you do to try and get W11 installed might fail randomly in the future, leaving a machine unpatched / unsupported and landing everyone in the s**t if it gets compromised.

Krarl · Thursday at 9:44 AM

You can use WinBootMate to bypass the need for the security chip or edit appraiserres.dll if you're manually installing from an ISO

It does mean there's gonna be no auto-updates so it's more of a risk if you've got any females or boomers working for you. I'd just shell out for new hardware or stick with Win10

Cookie · Thursday at 10:17 AM

From a security point of view, please pony up the money for updated hardware, don't intentionally leave your business open to cyberattacks 😂

Presumably you've had these PC's for a fair while (guessing at 10 years +?!) so you should probably be upgrading them anyway for the safe of your staff who have to use old slow s**t

R3k1355 · Thursday at 10:23 AM

Modding windows to bypass the TPM check but disabling updates in the process is beyond stupid for a business.

How exactly would the company explain themselves when they inevitably get hacked and end up losing customer data or access to their own systems?

Daz... · Thursday at 10:47 AM

The fact they can’t run Windows 11 means they replacing, it can run on machines 8/9 years old with no workarounds so you’ve definitely had your money’s worth out of them.

Sir_Dave · Thursday at 12:56 PM

If only you knew someone who specialised in financing IT @MarkCup

fulhamfcboy · Thursday at 1:01 PM

As has been said previously, this is risky territory for a business. 7th gen CPU's are 7-8 years old, so the reality is those 35 PC's are already well sweated assets. No Cyber Policy is going to pay out should you need to claim (regardless of the reasoning behind said claim) and you really are exposing yourself to a world of pain.

fulhamfcboy · Thursday at 1:04 PM

Its also worth noting, the TPM holds the encryption key for Bitlocker, so assuming you did bypass, disk encryption keys this would need to either be manually managed (PITA) or encryption disabled, again not something any sane business would choose to do IMHO.

MarkCup · Thursday at 1:09 PM

Thanks all, exactly what I wanted to hear to argue my case.

The thought of leaving a machine on the network without protection just to see what happens is not a viable tactic. My MD has finally listened!

SharkyUK · Thursday at 9:37 PM

Windows 10 is reaching end of life as well (October I believe) Definitely cheaper, safer, and easier to buy new hardware than to pay Microsoft a lot of money for Windows 10 support post end-of-life.

JP83 · Thursday at 9:46 PM

Coming to the end of this rollout myself. 46 pcs and 10 laptops.

HP have a good cashback offer on their mini pcs.

Flob · Thursday at 10:08 PM

Worth noting that not everyone needs a £1000 computer, there will be loads of people in your office who will be absolutely fine with a £300 mini desktop. Our IT guy is a fucker for this as he just loves buying stuff so the office admin girl ends up with a 3k machine for no reason other than he couldn't control himself.

Oggy997 · Thursday at 10:19 PM

He needs to have a word with my soon to be boss, you'd think he was spending his own money.

charltjr · 2025-06-20T08:34:18+0100

“Low end” PCs are so capable these days. I just picked up a NUC sized one with a six core twelve thread ryzen CPU, 16Gb of memory, a 512Gb SSD and Windows 11 pro. It’s brilliant. £200 from AliExpress so not something a business would want but there is so much performance available for general office use for so little cash now. Super low power consumption too, so low running costs.

Our place makes me laugh, we need high spec laptops because we use them for running some fairly computationally demanding software, but sales, marketing, HR, etc all get the same spec. It’s such a waste of money.

Oggy997 · 2025-06-20T08:55:44+0100

charltjr said:
Our place makes me laugh, we need high spec laptops because we use them for running some fairly computationally demanding software, but sales, marketing, HR, etc all get the same spec. It’s such a waste of money.

Booker would spec up laptops relative to the role, it made so much more sense, I'd be doing lots of vizql stuff and so needed lots of ram, and got it.

Here, if you're a senior manager you get an elite book, if you're not you get some entry level shite that struggles to calculate some moderate formulae in excel.
Thankfully I can rdp into a server with much more resource, but me & others are running povvo spec shite.

davo172 · 2025-06-20T09:02:48+0100

Flob said:
Worth noting that not everyone needs a £1000 computer, there will be loads of people in your office who will be absolutely fine with a £300 mini desktop. Our IT guy is a fucker for this as he just loves buying stuff so the office admin girl ends up with a 3k machine for no reason other than he couldn't control himself.

With spending or admin girl?

Pics of office admin girl ?

CS will decide if she needs a 3k pc🤔

ChrisR · 2025-06-20T13:44:26+0100

charltjr said:
“Low end” PCs are so capable these days. I just picked up a NUC sized one with a six core twelve thread ryzen CPU, 16Gb of memory, a 512Gb SSD and Windows 11 pro. It’s brilliant. £200 from AliExpress so not something a business would want but there is so much performance available for general office use for so little cash now. Super low power consumption too, so low running costs.

Yup they are great, I've been buying the little Beelink machines off Amazon for stuff and they do the job nicely.

A couple of the low power N150 based machines as office computers for my parents, a similar one for their home, and I picked up one of the 8 core Ryzen models, stuck 64gig of laptop RAM and an extra 2TB SSD I had knocking around and use it as a Proxmox home lab box. Does the job great and cost not very much!

SharkyUK · 2025-06-20T21:44:07+0100

davo172 said:
With spending or admin girl?

Pics of office admin girl ?

CS will decide if she needs a 3k pc🤔

3k? Well, I guess that covers the GPU. What about the rest?

GiT · 2025-06-20T22:46:09+0100

I've done my DJ Laptop with this - seemless onto W11.

Search

Search

Windows 11, TPMs, and mass machine replacement

MarkCup

Gavin.

The Psychedelic Socialist

Krarl

Cookie

R3k1355

Daz...

Sir_Dave

fulhamfcboy

fulhamfcboy

MarkCup

SharkyUK

JP83

South Central-Oxfordshire

Flob

Oggy997

charltjr

Oggy997

davo172

ChrisR

SharkyUK

GiT

Similar threads