TPM

It’s been a little learning about new things around here with the announcement from Microsoft about Windows 11 last week. The company shared much information about the upgrade including this one little thing that I’d never heard of but sure stirred up the community.

It’s a thing called TPM – Trusted Platform Module. In my typical nerdy world, this is the sort of thing that I’d be very curious about and muck around with just because I could. However, the uproar from the community meant that it was much more than just a new thing. It was a show stopper and will stop many people from being able to upgrade their computer to Windows 11. That raised the importance.

Now, this isn’t the first time that I’ve had a company pull the rug out from under me. My MacBook Pro hit the end of the line for MacOS upgrades a while back. With the exception of flaky bluetooth, it seems to be running well. The best thing I ever did for it was to replace the hard drive and move to an SSD. Of course, I paid way more at the time for the drive than what I could get for it today but that’s life.

So, is this going to happen again? I just got this computer.

Well, time flies! My “new” computer is actually older than I think. I have an external keyboard and mouse so it actually looks like it’s kind of just out of the box, no showing the signs of wear. I specifically wanted a lot of memory and an i7 processor when I bought a computer and I got it. When you read about Intel processors, you actually see them referenced by code name and, quite frankly, I didn’t know what kind of Lake processor I had. That was tough when I read this article because it requires a knowledge of that sort of thing. I haven’t worn off the Intel stick on the keyboard so it claims to be a Core i7 8th Gen which I guess is a Coffee Lake processor. When I look at the article, that appears to be a processor that is supported so I had a good feeling.

Microsoft, on its website, has a page devoted to the upgrade located here. I was interacting with Miguel Guhlin and he pointed to the PC Health Check application. I downloaded it, ran it, and

So, two pieces of good news. I can run Windows 11 and it’s free.

As I headed back, Miguel pointed to a checker that he felt had better utility. It’s called WhyNotWin11.

I ran it and now feel really good about my chances of running Windows 11.

In a back and forth with Miguel, he didn’t have TPM and was working at it. He did find a solution and blogged about it here. This may be helpful for a LOT of people going forward.

Now, for the confession. I was a little nervous that the only way to upgrade was to buy a new PC. Quite frankly, I don’t mind Windows 10 but there are some annoyances like having to use the legacy Control Panel at times. It seems to me by now that it should have migrated everything to the Settings button. Or maybe it has and I can’t just find it.

I was prepared to just move to Linux full time instead of dual booting. Like most people these days, I seldom actually have to have dedicated applications since most things are down in the browser. Besides, it does actually take me a few years to get a computer configured to my liking. I’m forever tweaking and moving things in from backups. I’d not done with that process yet!

I guess that the bottom line is that I was fortunate to upgrade when I did although there are always bright and shiny things out there. If the community is speaking clearly, there are going to be a lot of people who won’t be in a position to upgrade.