It's mostly because of the CPU and TPM requirements, which computers made for those older operating systems don't meet. The problem is, machines running Windows 8.1 or 7 are most likely too old to support Windows 11. Technically, using the Media Creation Tool to upgrade to Windows 11 is also possible. One thing you may be wondering seeing as Windows 11 has been widely available for a while now is why wouldn't you upgrade to that instead and get a much longer support period. Click OK once you have the desired settings. You can choose any drive letter you want here, and you can choose to disable autorun or to keep the virtual drive after a restart.Right-click the ISO file and choose Select drive letter & mount.Click Install and let the process finish. During the installation process, you'll see a prompt for the program to install a device driver.

On Windows 8.1, you can simply double-click the ISO file, but on Windows 7, you'll need to use a third-party program such as WinCDEmu. If you created an ISO, find the ISO file that was created and mount it.

For USB drives, when the process ends, you'll immediately have the installation drive ready.

Windows 10 will start downloading and installation media will be created.

It might be better to only have one drive connected so you don't accidentally select a different drive. If you want to use a USB drive, you'll simply see a list of all the external drives plugged into your PC so you can choose the right one. Browse to whatever folder you prefer, choose a file name, and click Save. You'll be prompted to choose a location to save the ISO file to.Again, for our example, we're using an ISO file. Here, you can choose whatever method you prefer, and if you're using a USB drive, you'll want to have it plugged in at this point.If you're setting this up for a different computer, make sure the settings match what's on your target device. Since you're trying to upgrade, you'll want to leave this with the default settings since they match your PC. You'll see a screen with language, architecture, and edition options related to the Windows installation.Don't worry, you can use this method for the same PC you're already using. After accepting the license terms, choose Create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) for another PC.We're going to be focusing on using an ISO file here, but the process is very similar if you want to create a USB drive. If this is the route you want to take, run the Media Creation Tool as mentioned above. Make sure to back it up to another device. If you use a USB drive as installation media, any data on it will be deleted.

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