Computeractive magazine has recently carried articles about software called Flyby11 which helps bypass the restrictions on upgrading to some degree. When I first heard of Flyby11 I was suspicious. Software like this which promises the world is usually too good to be true. But as I respect the Computeractive writers, I thought I'd give it a go after reading the articles. After all, if they thought it was safe, they know more than me, so the worst that might happen was likely to be failure to upgrade or a bricked PC. These were due to be retired anyway.
It took a lot of time (operating system upgrades usually do). It successfully upgraded two of the three PCs. The third was a 15 year old Packard Bell already upgraded from Windows 7 to 10, so no great loss.
It involves downloading the Flyby11 software itself and an official Windows 11 upgrade ISO file (be warned, the latter is about 5GB in size, so put it on a USB pen drive if your Windows 10 PC is short of space on its drive. Download flyby11.zip from https://github.com/builtbybel/Flyby11/releases/, unzip it to a folder of your choice on your hard drive or pen drive, and run flyby11.exe in Windows 10 by double clicking on the file. From there, just follow the prompts - it was easy even for a ham-fisted PC user like me.
It checks the computer to establish the chances of a successful upgrade before accessing the ISO file and slightly modifying the installer. Apparently it makes use of Windows Server installation routines to get round the Micro$oft limitations. It reckoned two of my PCs had a "high to very high chance" of upgrade and the third only a "low" chance of success. That proved accurate - the two laptops upgraded OK to Win11, while the old Packard Bell desktop failed and reverted to Windows 10.
One of the laptops is a fairly old 64GB eMMC netbook type of laptop, so I wasn't expecting success with that one, much to my surprise it's now happily running Windows 11, proving what Flyby11 can do and confirming what the magazine said about it. Hopefully, this software will save thousands or millions of PCs from ending up in landfill or recycling, extending the life of these slightly older PCs.
Flyby11 is free software, although the author invites small payments for his work. I'll leave these computers running for a few days and if all is well he'll certainly get that payment from me.
- Flyby11 screen
- Flyby11 screen
