The Sinclair QL Forum

Three of my four PCs had failed the Micro$oft PC Health Check app for upgrading from Windows 10 to 11. So they were destined to be retired in about 150 days when paid support is the only way to keep them going for any length of time. Or, worse, install Linux <Dilwyn quakes in fear>

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.

Thanks for that info, Dilywn. I didn't know about that, and would certainly have tried it if I'd known about it.

My own 12-year old HP PC failed the test last week when I tried it, so I ordered a replacement and I'm setting it up today. At least it was just a refurb so it didn't break the bank, but it's not exactly a huge amount faster than the old one, so it all seems a bit pointless.

Cheers,
Alan

I might just have to try this- one of my PCs is literally just one CPU generation before the cutoff.

BTW, found the phrase "15 year old Packard Bell" quite funny because the name hasn't been around on this side of the pond in about 25 years...

Windows is that abusive relationship noone can leave

I've bought a new PC back in December with 14th Gen i7 processor and 32GB RAM. The PC I used for production until then is a 10-year old 4th Gen i7 with 8GB RAM and a 250GB SSD, which I now have upgraded to 1TB (+ 2TB HDD). In theory, it could be upgraded to Windows 11 using a registry hack to bypass TPM 2.0 but I don't want to go that way. Linux Mint runs fine and smoother than Windows 10, which is already loaded with telemetry and spyware eating up memory and CPU time (not even mentioning Win11).

Unfortunately, I still have some apps that don't run on WINE so sometimes I have to use Windows on that machine. So I initially installed W10 into a VirtualBox VM to run these apps in an isolated environment, without dangerous things like web browsers and the like (which can run under Linux anyway).

However, recently I was inspired by this article and re-installed the 32-bit version of Windows 7 in a VM. It runs much smoother than W10 in only 2GB memory (probably in 1GB too) and runs my legacy Win apps too, so I think I will stick to this configuration when October comes.

(yes, I could of course ditch Windows too on my production PC, but apps I use for work are still hard to replace by Linux versions).

desin wrote: Wed May 14, 2025 10:29 am viewtopic.php?p=63123#p63123

My systems all had M$ Office (they continue to work after the Flyby11 install).
Getting harder and harder to install and use Windoze without an M$ account now as Micor$oft force you to do things their way and their way only with their "we know better than anyone else" attitudes.

Micro$oft are doing all they can to push people off Windows to other operating systems.

Edit: And don't get me started on how Windows 12 will be all-AI. Aargh.