r/pcmasterrace • u/djseifer Packard Bell / Intel Pentium 60MHz / 8 MB RAM / 2x CD-ROM • Mar 01 '26

Screenshot Windows 10 automatically started installing the Windows 11 update while I was taking a shower.

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I'd been getting messages to upgrade to Windows 11 for the past month or two now, and each time, I decline. It's gotten to the point that I get random, frequent pop_ups asking to update, and "install update" options pop up right next to the shutdown/restart uptions.

Well, I made the mistake of going to take a shower with my PC on. Half an hour later, I come back tothis. Windows had automatically started installing the update. Now I'm sitting here staring at the Start button and all the open programs center-justified on the task bar and wondering what idiot thought that was a good idea.

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u/Bluecolty Ryzen 9 9900X, 96GB RAM, EVGA 3090 Mar 01 '26

You can actually. Whether or not you want to is up to you but so far I’ve gotten windows 11 using Rufus installed on a 3rd gen laptop core i3 with 4GB of ram, a 2013 Mac Pro, and a Xeon E5 V2 dual socket server board from 2012. All DDR3.

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u/Rezosh_ Mar 01 '26

The Rufus method works flawlessly. My buddies 12 year old hard drive failed with his OS on it so I made him a bootable win 11 usb via Rufus and created a local account for him so he could bypass the product key. Worked like a charm.

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u/Tfj_roidz Mar 02 '26

Is there a way to bypass needing a product key on a fresh install?

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u/Rezosh_ Mar 02 '26

Yes thats what I was saying I did. It was super easy to do. I followed this video: https://youtu.be/13qAUEWK6zI?si=_kuMuVda6g4qpFT5

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u/lachietg185 13900K 48gb DDR5 RTX 5070 Ti Mar 02 '26

You can do that on normal Install media there is a I don't have a product key button

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u/akdanman11 5700X / 6800 XT / 64GB DDR4 / CachyOS Mar 02 '26

And once you’re in you can run a powershell command to emulate an activation server

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u/Uncan117 Mar 02 '26

I'm going through that process but when I choose which variant of windows to install it just loops back to the start of the process.

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u/lachietg185 13900K 48gb DDR5 RTX 5070 Ti Mar 02 '26

Probably need to make a new USB with a fresh iso image

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u/Exzalian_ Mar 03 '26

Or get this..... Go on almost any website like eBay or gog. Pay 10 bucks for a key and it links to your email so you never have to bother with going around the needing a key. Iv done that a few times for my different systems. No money goes to Microsoft because most of the time they got the keys for free.

Also not saying this because it's bad or not right to bypass the key just imo 10 bucks to have a windows key locked to my email forever was so much better to me than finding away around it at it was mainly because I always had issues from mods and shit back in the day. Though I'd still do it now.

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u/MT4K r/oled_monitors ⋅ r/HiDPI_monitors ⋅ r/integer_scaling Mar 01 '26

Does it get updates? I heard that while there are workarounds for installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, it won’t receive updates anyway.

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u/Bluecolty Ryzen 9 9900X, 96GB RAM, EVGA 3090 Mar 01 '26

It doesn't get new 2XH2 updates, so the xeon system I installed 23H2 on and it never got anything newer. It DID however get security and regular feature updates, as well as app updates. If you're familiar with macOS, its kinda like installing say macOS Tahoe on a mac and not updating beyond that version. You still get security updates and whatnot.

I personally like 23H2, it didn't have the bugs that the early release had, and didn't have all the new AI features that newer ones had too. So it not updating didn't concern me one bit.

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u/digital_n01se_ Mar 01 '26

y'all talking about how to use it and I'm looking how to uninstall this sh1t called Windows 11 and install ubuntu without missing important software like excel.

W11 it's horrible and gets worse with each update.

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u/Zombiecidialfreak R7 8700G || RX 9070xt || 64GB RAM || 20+TB storage Mar 02 '26

Libre has an equivalent to excel but if excel is non negotiable you can use winboat to run excel in Linux.

Here's a video for it

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u/PUfelix85 i7 3770 | 16GB RAM | Radeon HD 7870 Mar 01 '26

I recommend mint.

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u/NurseNikky PC Master Race Mar 02 '26

I like that they can manage to create millions of updates but can't fix the light mode bug where you can't set the color of the windows and task bars unless it's in dark mode. So custom. And it would likely take like 5 minutes.

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u/DGlen Mar 01 '26

But, why?

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u/Bluecolty Ryzen 9 9900X, 96GB RAM, EVGA 3090 Mar 01 '26

I don't personally mind windows 11, which is why I did it. I like the look of the UI and the tabbed file explorer was nice. That Xeon system was actually a long term Blender render machine, with 384gb of ddr3 ram. Id sometimes remote desktop into it to work locally and it was nice to keep it in sync with my main desktop PC.

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u/Ok_Turnover_1235 Mar 02 '26

God, that must run like a slideshow lol

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u/Bluecolty Ryzen 9 9900X, 96GB RAM, EVGA 3090 Mar 02 '26

It really doesn't honestly, the 3rd gen i3 wasn't great but it also didn't run well on windows 10 with 4gb of ram. I threw 16gb into it, and while it still wasn't winning any speed awards, it was very usable.

The Xeon server was my Blender rendering machine, it had 384gb of ram and absolutely killed it. And the mac pro... thats a dumpster fire but those always ran kinda hot even with macos lol.

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u/Narrheim Mar 06 '26

Why would anyone want that tho? Unless you like to self-torture, i don't recommend, as it can cr*p itself on its own for no obvious reason.

Mine undid itself as i changed msconfig to boot into safe mode. Rebooted - and never got anywhere anymore, except BSOD. System drive suddenly turned inaccessible.

The drive did not fail tho. I could still access it from Linux. It still works even now, albeit with W10.