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Windows 11 has been available for over a year. Now thatthe 22H2 updatefixed some (but not all) of its problems, Microsoft isstarting to get pushy about upgrading– even on PCs that can’t run Windows 11.
UPDATE: 2/27/23
Microsoft has told How-To Geek that the accidental upgrade notifications appeared on Windows 10 versions20H2,21H2, and22H2, as well asWindows 11 21H2. Microsoft says the bug was fixed the same day it appeared – July 05, 2025 – but may take a few days to fully take effect across all PCs. The original article continues below.
Microsoft started rolling out more aggressive upgrade alerts on Windows 10 PCsearlier this year, with full-screen messages asking people to upgrade to Windows 11, often obscuring the cancel/exit button in the process. However, that notification has started appearing on PCs that aren’t even officially compatible with Windows 11, according to reports on social media.
A thread on the Windows 11 reddit contains many reports of the problem. One Reddit usersaid, “I have Windows 10 on a i7-4770 and no TPM and it’s displaying the prompt to upgrade to Windows 11,” while another personsaidtheir PC with only 2 GB RAM that is “barely able to run Windows 10” received the message. Another person on Twitter said the message appeared on their laptop with no TPM chip and a 4th-generation Intel processor.
Microsoft’s officialsystem requirements for Windows 11call for an 8th-gen Intel CPU (or AMD Ryzen 2000) or newer, at least 4 GB RAM, 64 GB of storage, and TPM 2.0. Even though it is possible tobypass some of those requirements, doing so is not recommended by Microsoft, making it stranger for the popups to appear on older PCs. The installation process seems to still fail, but not before downloading the update.
The update notifications seem like an unintentional rollout, but we’ve reached out to Microsoft to ask, and we’ll update this article when (or if) we hear back.
