Another Big Decision Coming.......Win 11

Well that’s just great. :weary: :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

That was my biggest concern.

Possible fixes for TPM issue:

  1. Look for a BIOS setting. The health tool reported the same issue with my brand new Ryzen 9/motherboard combo. A setting in BIOS fixed it.
  2. Lots of motherboards have a connector for a TPM module. Check your motherboard docs. They’re about $20-$30 and easy to install.
  3. I’m not sure about this, but you might be able to replace just the CPU in your existing motherboard. Most modern CPUs have a built-in TPM module… so long as you can find one compatible with your existing motherboard.
  4. System upgrade. This is the approach I took because my main dev machine was about 9 years old - new motherboard, CPU and ram. I also went with a new T.2 drive for speed and so I can install Win11 as dual boot and keep my existing Win10 installation.
  5. I wouldn’t recommend this but if you’re keen… I’ve read it’s possible to build a custom installation ISO with the TPM requirement removed.

I’m guessing the other issue you’re referring to is Secure Boot… again check your bios settings and/or look for bios update. I’m not sure whether the health check is checking for support for this, or just whether it’s enabled or not. (update: the health check looks for secure boot supported, not necessarily enabled. My PC currently reports its supported but disabled and this passes the Win 11 requirements. Presumably it will need to be enabled before I install Win11). Windows (pre-11) can be installed as either Legacy BIOS boot or UEFI Boot so it might be just checking how the current OS was booted.

In other words,

  • secure boot might be supported by your bios but disabled,
  • secure boot might not be supported by your bios, but upgradeable by flashing
  • your system might be booting via legacy BIOS instead of UEFI which is typically selected at OS installation time. It can be changed but tricky and involves messing around with partitions etc… ie: back up first.
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Thanks @brad for all the tips, I’ll check it all out and see if there are solutions I may have overlooked.

Dave

I spent most of today setting up Windows 11 and playing around with it. I haven’t given Cantabile a good work out yet because I’ve been busy setting up dev tools and boot configuration.

First impressions are that I really like it.

  • It feels really responsive - like super snappy and fluid. Possibly due to new processor, new fast M.2 drive and fresh OS installation, but I don’t ever remember earlier versions of Windows feeling like this. The length of the animations is just right so it feels fluid and not too slow.
  • The UI looks crisp and bright - even in dark mode.
  • Settings screens have been greatly improved and much more logical.
  • Multi-monitor support seems good.
  • Dark mode seems much better and haven’t seen any of the Windows 10 flashes of white.
  • Installed a bunch of apps (dev tools, inkscape, gimp etc…) and everything seems to be working fine.
  • As an experiment I’ve decided to try the new version of Edge (usually I use Opera). Seems good so far so one less thing to install if it holds up.
  • Similarly I’ve been playing the new Windows Terminal and its way better… cya cmd.exe.
  • Centered task bar icons - felt a little weird at first, but it’s growing on me.
  • Not sure if I like the rounded corners on most windows, but not particularly offended by them.

Some gripes too:

  1. By default it’s near impossible to tell which window is active. One of these is, one isn’t:

    Turning on these two options helps:

    But it’s still too subtle for my liking. Note the thin blue border on the rhs. Also it depends on the app too - some have a blue title bar, some don’t which is a bit inconsistent.

  2. Shift-click on an icon in taskbar doesn’t start a new instance and need to use middle button, or right click. I hope that was an oversight and they fix it.

  3. Getting a decent boot loader for Win 10, Win 11 and Linux took some work. Ended up going with refind, some customizations to the UEFI ESP partition and some bcdedit foolery. I might write this up as a blog post because I couldn’t find it documented anywhere.

  4. The Installer tried really hard to get me to use Microsoft Account and I ended up having to turn off the Wifi router to convince it that a local account was better.

TL;DR:

  • The good is really good.
  • The bad is mostly issues that need to be dealt with and then no longer an issue
  • All up a win I think.

Will report back if I find anything else of interest. I’m curious what others who’ve made the leap think.

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At last resort, there is always this:

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I finished checking it all out and struck out on my particular motherboard. The last bios update was 2013, 2 years before TPM 2 and while it has a 20 pin TPM socket it only supports 1.2. So I will look at something like @Corky 's suggestion or an eventual hardware upgrade. Thanks @brad for all the advice and feedback.

Dave

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Tried to upgrade my laptop today. It spent two hours doing its thing, then reverted itself back to Win10. Sigh…

I upgraded my home PC yesterday to Win 11. I use it mostly for games, watching videos, surfing with MS Edge, and Cantabile/QLC+/Mixxx/SCS configuration and testing.

The good:
I upgraded from Windows 10 via Windows Update. It downloaded and upgraded to Windows 11 with very little interaction from me, and within 20 minutes I was at the Windows 11 desktop. After the installation there were quite a few additional updates that needed to be done, for a total of another 30 minutes.

My CPU is an AMD 3700X, and knowing that there were performance issues, my next step was to download and install the latest AMD Chipset software. That downloaded and installed without issue and things seem to be as snappy as they always were afterward. Next I installed the latest Nvidia drivers (Asus 2070 Super), which also went without a hitch.

Cantabile asked for the license key, but it worked immediately after I re-entered it and did not ask for it again. QLC+/Mixxx/SCS/LoopMIDI all ran immediately with no issues.

Skyrim and Borderlands 3 (the games I play the most) also worked without issue. MS Edge of course worked immediately and had all my favorites available on opening.

So, overall my upgrade experience was very good. Anything that would be considered standard installation/configuration just works and seem to work well.

The bad:
To try to save some wear and tear on my SSD, I configured a ram drive and had windows save temp files, event logs, and MS Edge cache to it. The ram drive loaded, but the event log service loads first and it won’t save logs to the ramdisk. The funny part about this is I tried to move the event logs back to C:\Windows\System32\WinEvt\Logs, but that did not get event logs to work either; no logs are saved, and Event Viewer crashes after opening. MS Edge doesn’t allow you to easily change the path for the disk cache anymore (–disk-cache-dir= was a command line switch that let you do this, it seems to be deprecated now). Having a 2G ramdisk just for temp files is insane (32G of system ram). I removed the ramdisk software and won’t be reinstalling it.

Looking through my C: drive, I’ve found tons of duplicate updates to things like Asus Armoury Crate, Razer Synapse, MS Edge, and lots of junk folders and files from installation/uninstallation of programs I never used. This isn’t due specifically to Windows 11, just shoddy programing/installation routines, but I can’t let it go, and I’ll have to format the disk and start fresh.

A lot of the changes to the UI feel like a step backward IMO. The start menu isn’t as customizable, the right click menus have less options immediately available. “Dark Mode” is half-baked, rounded corners are about 50% done. You can no longer get to Task Manager by right-clicking the taskbar, settings are mixed between the Settings app and Control Panel, the System Tray is more customizable but in a much kludgier way, and last but definitely not least, Advertisements.

If anyone has an follow up questions, I’m more than happy to rant some more.

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I have little faith in Windows upgrades. Clean install for me every time.

Fwiw: Win11 activated using my Win7 product key. (But I think it’s a volume license key)

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For anyone wanted to triple boot Win10/Win11 and Linux, you might find this useful:

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Second time lucky for me. Looks good so far.

TBH I only upgraded my backup laptop since I was having trouble with it anyway. So far Win11 seems to have effected a cure and it actually seems more spritely.

I will report back with more details when I have given it sufficient time to make an opinion.

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Installed on my production Cantabile machine yesterday. My soundcard stopped working (Steinberg UR22MKII) and that took disconnecting it, getting Windows audio to work, reconnect it and that was it. Took about 5 minutes of fiddling post install.

Apart from visual changes the system behaves same as before. Certainly not slower.

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Since Windows 11 is just 21H2, I didn’t expect any radical changes.
I also upgraded, didn’t see any hiccups so far.

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Hi JCollins

Welcome to the Cantabile forum. Thanks for your input.

Regards

Corky

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The Cynic within me wonders if Wndows 10 will start to slow down and become really cymbersome as though it is full of bloatware. I remember all the other versions of Windows did this within a few months of the latest version being announced. We were supposed to think that the old version of Windows was somehow worn out and needed replacing with the latest version!

I think Windows 10 runs better after you remove the bloatware:

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Ah, anything similar for Windows 11?

I believe that although the Win11 app store itself is less restricted it’s mostly the same as it was in Windows 10. Most likely a Win10 PowerShell script that removes UWP apps in Windows 10 will perform the same tasks in Windows 11. Microsoft has eliminated some of them already such as OneNote, Wallet, 3DViewer and a few others.

I’d never run those automatic scripts. I suggest that you everything configure/remove/tweak manually.

I use the free version of Revo Uninstaller to remove Windows bloatware.