A lot of people think they are ready for Windows 11, or they are rushing around trying to get ready. Until today they have really been guessing at what all they would need to truly be ready for the newest Microsoft Operating System.
Microsoft has just provided a comprehensive update on the ‘minimum system requirements’ for Windows 11 and a new ‘PC Health Check app’ that will show you almost instantly if your computer meets those minimum requirements. A lot of people are going to be surprised if they have been adding system memory, and perhaps increasing their hard drive capacity, to be able to deal with the requirements of the new OS, because they most likely forgot about one of the essential requirements for a more sophisticated operating system… the processor. I am not even talking about 32-bit vs 64-bit processors. I assume you already realize that we are only talking about 64-bit systems for Windows 11.
Microsoft has established strict requirements for the 64-bit processors that can be used with Windows 11 systems and the reality is that a lot of systems have processors that are not going to support the new OS no matter how much RAM or storage memory you add. While they have made some additions to the list of acceptable processors in the most recent system requirement update, the list still seemingly omits a lot of processors that are more than a couple of years old. Microsoft says they use criteria like ‘reliability’, ‘security’ and ‘compatibility’ in determining the acceptability of processors, but it seems hard to imagine that an Intel processor released one month before another Intel processor with a slightly different model number that was used in thousands of OEM installations had any less reliability, security or compatibility than the processor that was approved while the other was not1.
Because of the cumbersome nature of all the system requirements, which you can see by visiting this page, Microsoft decided to release an ‘updated preview version’ of their PC Health Check app to ‘Windows Insiders’ this week. This tool expands the functionality check of a system for compatibility and provides more complete messaging concerning the eligibility of a syste (as shown below). It also provides links to support articles regarding potential remediation steps that may be of assistance in resolving insufficiencies. While this new app is presently limited to Windows Insiders, it is the forerunner of a PC Health Check that Microsoft intends to make available to the general public in the coming weeks. While we can't furnish you with the URL for the 'Windows Insiders app', Insightful Accountant will strive to bring you the URL of that app when it become available.
The eligibility check functionality in Microsoft's PC Health Check app for 'Windows Insiders' includes improved messaging on eligibility and links to relevant support articles that include potential remediation steps.
So, What if Your System Won’t Support Windows 11?
Rumors have circulated that Windows 11 would take over all Windows 10 computers within weeks of the release and force an upgrade… that simply isn’t true! As you can tell from the content above, many computers simply won’t, and never will be able to upgrade to Windows 11.
While Microsoft expects a huge number of loyal Windows 10 users to voluntarily transition to Windows 11 even if they must acquire new computers meeting the minimum system requirements, they also understand that a lot of Windows 10 users simply will NOT make the upgrade any time soon because their hardware doesn’t meet the requirements. Therefore, Microsoft has made it clear that support for Windows 10 will continue through October 14, 2025, and they will even be making feature upgrades to Windows 10 later this year. So, Microsoft isn't simply putting Windows 10 on the shelf and forgetting all about it after the release of Windows 11.
All in all, it seems if you think you are ready for Windows 11 you probably are not (unless you are truly ‘Tech Savvy’ )! That doesn’t mean you can’t be, but it is a question of ‘time frame and budget’, like a lot of things. It may be more economical to purchase a new computer that is fully Windows 11 compatible with Windows 11 factory-installed than to try to retrofit and upgrade from Windows 10, especially if your existing hardware is strained as is. If you have a good machine that isn’t ready, then perhaps you don’t need to upgrade at all right now to Windows 11, just stick with Windows 10 for the present as long as you can run the applications you need to run.
What about QuickBooks 2022 if you Don't have Windows 11?
While it is true that Intuit got QuickBooks 2022 64-bit compliant so that it would be compatible with Windows 11, that doesn't mean that it will only run under Windows 11. If that were true, none of us who tested QuickBooks 2022 could have tested it at all since we would not have had Windows 11 to test it with.
When it is released, QuickBooks 2022 will require a 64-bit computer (we told you that in our article about QuickBooks 2022 going 64-bit), but most computers are already 64-bit. They do currently support both 64-bit and 32-bit applications (under Windows 10). You may have been running a 32-bit version of QuickBooks on your 64-bit computer perhaps for several years. If so, QuickBooks 2022 simply will need to be installed as a 64-bit version rather than a 32-bit version. You may already be familiar with that type of choice if you installed ‘Microsoft Office applications’ because you were given the choice of 64-bit or 32-bit versions at the time of installation. QuickBooks 2022 will self-install as a 64-bit version if your computer is 64-bit and it won’t install at all if your computer is 32-bit.
It looks like we ‘all’ have a lot longer to adjust to not only the idea, but the practicality, of Windows 11 than we thought we did. While October 14, 2025, is just over 4 years away, that gives you 4 years to figure it out, which is way better than 4-months like some reports had many people worrying about. Take time to figure it out... a few upgrades never hurt anybody's system even if you do buy a new one in the long run. Your new version of QuickBooks will run between now and then with more RAM on board and a faster solid-state-drive. Who knows, you might even be able to shove part of that RAM into a new system and really have a beast of a machine that makes that new processor spin like a juke-box.
1 - comparing two customer OEM manufactured systems purchased at the same time with the same specifications but delivered with alternative Intel processors on the motherboards at the time of system build (one model type different).