Are your devices ready for the leap to Windows 11?

With support ending for Windows 10 in October 2025, many IT leaders are planning how they’ll eliminate that OS from their businesses before Microsoft ceases to patch security issues in the ageing software. The natural transition would be to move to Windows 11, but older devices that run Windows 10 quite happily might not be compatible with the newer OS. 

Microsoft has published a detailed set of system requirements, but many of the requirements (such as RAM and processor) are met by even quite old hardware. However, these are the three main areas where device might not meet the requirements.

• Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0 is a requirement for Windows 11. This is a piece of hardware that has been included in laptops for quite some time (some low-end consumer laptops aside) but has only more recently been included in desktop machines. There is an older standard, TPM 1.2, that is not compatible. 

• Processors (and, implicitly, chipsets) must be on Microsoft’s approved list. 

• The system firmware must support UEFI to support the Secure Boot feature. 

In reality, PCs have supported UEFI for many years but some of your oldest machines might not meet the processor or TPM requirements. 

These new requirements are to allow some of the security features that were turned off by default in Windows 10 to be enabled by default in Windows 11. BitLocker, to encrypt data at rest on the device, and Secure Boot, to provide assurance that the OS software hasn’t been tampered with, are two of the primary examples. 

Unless you have a small fleet of relatively few models of PCs, some work needs to be done to work out which devices will and won’t support Windows 11. 

If you have an up-to-date, accurate and complete inventory and PC models and their specification then you will only need to check for one of each model. This can make the task easier. 

The simplest way to check an individual PC is to run the PC Health Check app on each PC. This will be fine when you don’t have very many models, but if your environment is large then you’ll need a more scalable way to check. 

Those with the more capable subscriptions who have taken advantage of Intune are able to use a built-in readiness report in Intune. The subscriptions required are Windows Enterprise or Education in E3 or E5 flavours or the Microsoft 365 suites that include them, such as Microsoft 365 E3. Notably, Business Premium doesn’t include this feature.