Windows 11 [2021]

I finally managed to upgrade to W11. It was quite a saga but I got there in the end. I've been wanting to upgrade since it released due to the apparently much better handling of HDR. HDR in Windows 10 is atrocious and in most games I was getting horribly crushed blacks with HDR enabled. HZD is basically unplayable with it on at night time.

Unfortunately my system disk had an MBR partition which prevented me from turning on Secure Boot which in turn prevented Windows 11 from installing. I did try one of the hacks to get around this previously but the upgrade kept crashing and then reverting back to Windows 10.

Anyway I picked up a new (and my first) NVMe drive yesterday with the intention of going an MBR to GPT disk clone between my old SATA SDD and the m2. Turns out the software to enable that was almost as expensive as the disk though (a 1TB 3500MB/s PCIe 3.0 drive for £79.99) so I decided to try the inbuilt Windows tool for converting an MBR disk to GPT without losing any information. I'd heard it can be unreliable but thankfully it worked and I was able to download W11. After multiple failed an backed out upgrades I eventually got it to work by unplugging every non-essential peripheral and PCIe card in the PC and switching the display to my TV.

After all that I'm happy to report that Windows 11 HDR works as advertised and all my game issues appear to be gone :D I don't even hate the interface! And I'm now ready for Direct Storage too. Happy days!
 
I don't believe I have any reason to upgrade to W11 so I think I'll wait for now. Maybe once I get a new GPU one day.
 
I really enjoy Windows 11. It's been the most seamless and painless transition I can remember, personally.

That said... I am experiencing the BIOS fTPM Ryzen audio crackle/hitch issue that was recently reported. Hopefully MS and AMD can get that patched up quickly.. or that it doesn't affect their future processors because if not, later this year when I do a new build I'll switch to Intel.

Though I guess a MOBO with an actual TPM chip on it would clear up that issue anyway.
 
I've been installing it on old machines out of curiosity. It clean installed without any special settings on Haswell w/TPM 1.2 and Skylake w/TPM 1.2 with no complaints and happily activated itself based on previous Windows 10 activations.
 
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Fwiw, I had Win11 on my Sandy Bridge-era 3930k and Aorus 1080Ti without any issues. I've been meaning to try it on my Arrandale i5-640m laptop and just haven't done it yet. Maybe tomorrow...

Anyone got steam vr stutter with w11? And any fix?
Your post popped in just as I was finishing my post :) I use my Oculus Quest with VRDesktop and Steam and have not experienced any stuttering issues. What hardware combination are you using?
 
Fwiw, I had Win11 on my Sandy Bridge-era 3930k and Aorus 1080Ti without any issues. I've been meaning to try it on my Arrandale i5-640m laptop and just haven't done it yet. Maybe tomorrow...


Your post popped in just as I was finishing my post :) I use my Oculus Quest with VRDesktop and Steam and have not experienced any stuttering issues. What hardware combination are you using?

Rtx 3070 LHR, ryzen 5600x.

Googling around, seems only happen to amd cpu with Nvidia gpu.
 
Ok, you guys got me curious so I went looking for this Ryzen fTPM + Win11 audio glitch. First, how crazy is it that emulating a trusted platform module somehow messes with audio output? Second, I haven't seen anyone mention whether it's unique to onboard and/or PCIe audio based solutions -- does anyone here know? I'm using a much older USB-connected Creative XFi and I've yet to experience any problems with audio stutter on my fTPM-enabled 5950x on Windows 11... And it's not for any lack of video watching or game playing! YouTube, Plex, Amazon Video, Netflix, and a remarkable portion of my Steam library have all run through this box at this point.
 
Ok, you guys got me curious so I went looking for this Ryzen fTPM + Win11 audio glitch. First, how crazy is it that emulating a trusted platform module somehow messes with audio output? Second, I haven't seen anyone mention whether it's unique to onboard and/or PCIe audio based solutions -- does anyone here know? I'm using a much older USB-connected Creative XFi and I've yet to experience any problems with audio stutter on my fTPM-enabled 5950x on Windows 11... And it's not for any lack of video watching or game playing! YouTube, Plex, Amazon Video, Netflix, and a remarkable portion of my Steam library have all run through this box at this point.

I also didn't experience that issue. I use display port audio.

So maybe issue limited to inboard Realtek audio?
 
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This is pretty great. Because Windows 11 isn't. ;)
https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher

I was looking at whether Classic Shell from the horrific days of Windows 8 still works, but this thing is designed for Win11.

OK, I finally got to play with this on my lone Windows 11 machine.

Thank you so much for posting this here. It does in fact restore the functionality of the Windows Taskbar.

Incredibly, it even preserves the functionality of the Quick Launch Toolbar. I was prepared to lose this functionality if the rest of the functionality of the taskbar would be restored. But thankfully, I don't have to suffer without the use of the Quick Launch Toolbar. Yes!

Hopefully, Microsoft doesn't do something in the future that renders this inoperable as it is the only reason I'm now willing to install Windows 11 on my main working machine.

Thank you again @swaaye :)

Regards,
SB
 
OK, I finally got to play with this on my lone Windows 11 machine.

Thank you so much for posting this here. It does in fact restore the functionality of the Windows Taskbar.

Incredibly, it even preserves the functionality of the Quick Launch Toolbar. I was prepared to lose this functionality if the rest of the functionality of the taskbar would be restored. But thankfully, I don't have to suffer without the use of the Quick Launch Toolbar. Yes!

Hopefully, Microsoft doesn't do something in the future that renders this inoperable as it is the only reason I'm now willing to install Windows 11 on my main working machine.

Thank you again @swaaye :)

Regards,
SB

I'm stuck on the insider built, so cant use it :(

why Microsoft didn't allow insider to become outsider in W11 :( :(
 
I clean installed Windows 11 on my first generation Surface Book yesterday. Since it is Skylake it is not officially supported, but the OS installed without any special settings and Windows Update found drivers for everything. And that is about 40 different drivers. Looks like they are all old Windows 10 drivers from 2016-2018 though.
 
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I clean installed Windows 11 on my first generation Surface Book yesterday. Since it is Skylake it is not officially supported, but the OS installed without any special settings and Windows Update found drivers for everything. And that is about 40 different drivers. Looks like they are all old Windows 10 drivers from 2016-2018 though.

Theres a workaround. I have W11 on a i7 920 and FX 8350 retrosystems, runs great.
 
Theres a workaround. I have W11 on a i7 920 and FX 8350 retrosystems, runs great.
I think you misunderstood. It's working perfectly. I wasn't sure what to expect with it because it has a lot of unique hardware and is not officially supported.
 
Anyone installed on a Haswell based system?

Windows 10 has never really felt that snappy on my 4770k and was thinking of giving this a go to see if it improves anything.
 
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