Installing Windows 11
Despite the fact that I, mercifully, rarely have to deal with Windows professionally at the moment, I have to admit that I enjoy playing with new software. As a result, I ended up upgrading one of my personal laptops to Windows 11 a few weeks ago when it released on October 4th. I admittedly use that particular device for very little, and the last time it had been turned on prior to installing Windows 11 was to run the utility to check if it would be able to run Windows 11. Windows 11 has had famously strict requirements, resulting in plenty of guides on how to bypass them, but my machine was actually able to meet all of the requirements after I accessed my UEFI settings to enable my TPM; that had apparently been disabled from the OEM.
The very first thing to installing Windows 11 was trying to figure out how to install Windows 11. If you’re used to a sensible operating system like macOS or literally any Linux distribution, then you’re likely used to going into whatever part of the GUI you normally go to for installing updates, selecting the optional update for an OS upgrade, and you’re off to the races. This isn’t the case for Windows 11. I went through a couple of rounds of Windows updates before everything came back copacetic, and I realized that Microsoft wasn’t going to just give me the new OS. Instead, I had to go off to the Internet and start hunting for it.
My searches first directed me to this main page for Windows 11, which simply prompted me to use the same utility I previously mentioned to determine if my machine was eligible.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, my machine was eligible, just like it was the last time I ran the exact same utility.
Back to the drawing board. After some additional searches on the web, I found myself on this page prompting me to download Windows 11. This seemed promising. Yes, I was careful to ensure this was actually a legitimate site from Microsoft. Yes, it’s pathetic that Windows users have to be concerned about this sort of thing since 1.) their OS is basically Swiss cheese and 2.) Microsoft makes it this difficult to access their latest and greatest OS.
Initially, running the tool from the previous page simply gave me a nice message that the utility required was already running. Cool.
The main utility had a refresh button, so I tried hitting that and giving things another shot. The second time appeared to have been the charm, giving me a massive license agreement I needed to submit my soul to prior to being gifted the bounty of Windows 11.
After agreeing to everything under the sun, the download of Windows 11 started… for real this time.
I went and played more Magnum Quest on my iPad in order to distract myself from wondering why things like this aren’t served out through Windows Update or even — as heinous as it might be — the Store application. After a little while, the installation was almost over.
Another few minutes, and I had a prompt to tell me that things would reboot automatically in 30 minutes. That seems weirdly arbitrary to me; if it’s not going to just automatically reboot, and I understand why it wouldn’t, why make any kind of timer? Regardless…
With the minutia of just accessing Windows 11 out of the way, the actual installation went surprisingly smoothly. After I clicked Restart Now, my machine only went through maybe 5–10 minutes of work before it was back and ready for action. I had actually sat back down with my iPad only to realize that the wait wasn’t going to be nearly as long as I had anticipated. Soon enough, I was looking at my shiny new desktop with that centered taskbar.
I find it interesting that the installation itself wasn’t bad at all; the main hassle with getting Windows 11 was simply finding the right permutation of websites and helper applications from Microsoft to actually allow me to get the process started. I understand that Microsoft started Windows 11 as a staged rollout that wouldn’t automatically prompt everyone with an eligible system right out of the gate. That being said, I think they desperately need to find a more elegant solution for allowing people with machines that meet the requirements to be able to access their new OS when they’re actively looking for it. Having to search the Internet for this when Microsoft has not one but 2 methods of delivering software to Windows 10 devices feels extremely half baked. The entire process gave vibes that Microsoft really didn’t want anyone with existing hardware using Windows 11, and they’d much rather have people buy new laptops instead.
In the weeks since this, I’ve spent at least a little time just doing random things in Windows 11, so I’ll probably share some thoughts on the OS as a whole in a future post.
Originally published at https://looped.network on October 25, 2021.
