Installing Windows 11 on a 2010 Gaming Laptop... How Bad Is It?

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Windows 11 introduced some new requirements that prevent installation on a lot of older hardware. But luckily, it's pretty easy to bypass them. So today we're going to see how well an old Alienware gaming laptop from 2010 handles Microsoft's latest and greatest!
Original Video: • Alienware's $800 M11x ...
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro & Overview
01:11 - Install Prep
02:53 - Installation
04:18 - First Boot
06:01 - Problems Arise (of course)
09:14 - Installing OEM Software
15:05 - Running Some Games
22:53 - Outro
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● Music/Credits:
Background Music:
"Ersatz Bossa", "By the Fireplace", and "Brighton Lights" from the KZbin Audio Library
"Mining by Moonlight", "Acid Jazz", "Airport Lounge", "Spy Groove", "George Street Shuffle", and "Local Forecast - Elevator" by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com
Outro Music: Silent Partner - Bet On It
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Some materials in this video are used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, which allows "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, commenting, news reporting, teaching, and research.
#MichaelMJD #Windows11 #Alienware

[@WinXP_SP1]

I enjoyed this laptop. I did have similar issues with the drivers as well. On Windows 7 and 10. I encountered booting issues during that free upgrade to Windows 10. It sucks that you're stuck with the Intel GPU tho.

[@gd-ludlulu]

Amazing!

[@_lun4r_]

I really need KZbin to remove pinned comment feature like they did with the dislikes

[@OakBlox]

bro is from the past

[@detecta]

@@mctogo001 what are you talking about lol

[@Zentoro143]

@@OakBlox He is a member he gets videos earlier the us

[@sorakafutanari]

you know i'm starting to think you are michaelsoft binbows

[@ImNotLoganA]

I had a dream once that Michael put out an April Fools video where he revealed that to be his legal name

[@MarkRayers]

😂​@@ImNotLoganA

[@SonicBoone56]

I honestly am convinced he's Druaga1.

[@AddlerMartin]

Or Falcon from Gameranx. I mean... just LISTEN to the voice!

[@Win98Beta.]

​@@ImNotLoganA Oh my god that's the best dream ever. 😂

[@AlkaBalkaa]

I love how it asks you if you want to pin Microsoft edge to the task bar but even if you decline it does it anyway

[@ciach0_]

Do you want to pin Microsoft Edge to the Taskbar? [Yes] [Yes, but labeled as no]

[@eugiblisscast]

@@ciach0_ pretty much 👀

[@Lemonwastaken_]

Pin Edge? [Yes] [No] Let's pin Edge. [Yes] [Yes]

[@ImNotLoganA]

If they were honest: "you are not in control here, and we're done pretending you ever were"

[@henry_tsai]

[Yes][No and we'd stop pretending we care]

[@samashworth7717]

4:40 I like how it asks you if you'd like to pin edge to the taskbar AFTER it pins edge to the taskbar, and pressing no thanks changes nothing

[@zombie__]

4:44 it’s already pinned to the taskbar

[@Alex_Official4493]

true

[@MichaelMJD]

Makes it even more hilarious that it's asking... lol

[@turolretar]

this is hilarious and deep

[@ciach0_]

Do you want to pin Microsoft Edge to the Taskbar? [Yes] [Yes, but labeled as no]

[@rockpie]

@@ciach0_ nes

[@editzzbyfx]

The green field wallpaper reminds me of an iconic operating system 👀

[@calligraphysthetic]

Because this is the same place that was photographed recently, there are wine grapes there now. It's Bliss Hill from the Windows XP wallpaper, located in Sonoma, California. Michael has a video about it called 'Bliss - The Story of Windows XP's Famous Default Wallpaper

[@Lynixity]

@@calligraphysthetic r/woosh

[@editzzbyfx]

@@calligraphysthetic i know i even saw the video where mjd visited the place and took pictures

[@Simurated]

​@@Lynixityr/ihavereddit

[@calligraphysthetic]

@@Simurated r/thankyou@Simurated

[@ChudDin]

I know it's not the main subject of the video, but i'm impressed by how good Rufus has gotten. Thanks for showing us Michael! I'm gonna take advantage of not having to click away 50 billion pages on a Windows setup page.

[@adampope5107]

Rufus is awesome. It makes creating a bootable USB so trivial.

[@NotTheGaslighter]

honorable mention to Ventoy too, since you get to load multiple ISOs on there for if you wish to boot into, say, Windows 10, 7, and Linux Mint. didn't know Rufus had a configuration wizard though, thats really neat!

[@0x0fffff]

Rufus has always been good, but we have Ventoy now and it´s even more awesome

[@busski]

Ventoy is actually goated ​@@NotTheGaslighter

[@SamCoder.]

Your videos are just good! Love them!

[@ErikGoode]

Roughly 8 months ago I noticed my old (dual core Intel circa 2010) Dell laptops with discrete Nvidia video stopped working well with windows 11. I had to put them back on Windows 10 and use the Windows 7 Nvidia drivers. Your video confirms that is still an issue. Thank you.

[@EvilprinceVlad]

I had an M18 from 09 that I put 11 on before the cpu finally failed. It had dual graphics, 3.2 quad core, and 16 gigs of ram. Had to do the same as your video to get 11. It ran smoothly and had it hooked up for an hpc in my living room for streaming. Beefy enough for that. Loved the video!! Im all about keeping my stuff going as long as I can.

[@roblox123admet]

Thank you, MJD, for this video. You made my day better. Keep going.

[@joerizzo3579]

Love the game choices on the desktop mjd!

[@limbs1052]

I love your experiment & stress test in all OS without bias different from other channels.

[@bluemi858]

Hey, MichaelMJD! Love your videos!

[@2048Megabytes.]

Babe wake up, Michael MJD just uploaded

[@georgearsinte5495]

Lmao

[@Unknown-64209]

Babe wake up, everything went wrong is going to be in the title

[@ethanpschwartz]

_Squints against the sun._ You know I told you to only wake me up if he tries to game on a Core 2 Du-... oh my god.

[@ordinarryalien]

Babe wake up, people still use this overused joke.

[@Mr.QuantumC0re]

Thanks for telling me Babe!

[@lukasevo6242]

yay!!! new video, love your videos bro!!

[@DemonicMeWasHere]

I love to watch your videos when i'm bored. Thanks for your amazing content

[@wctcasc]

You know it’s a good day when this man uploads. Also, isn’t this like when you installed a beta build of Windows 11? I am getting fond memories of that video.

[@truneosprinter]

Hey man love the videos I always see your OS/2 poster which I find funny bcs I recently found out my grandpa helped develop it lmao

[@JustinTire]

It’s crazy to think that brand new laptops not even a decade later had specs STARTING at that!

[@joerizzo3579]

Michael please give us the content we’ve been waiting for. We need ice tray reviews

[@FengLiu-uv7sf]

Thank you so much! It saved me a lot of time! ( was thinking about installing Win 11 on a similar laptop)

[@Jacobpartner123]

nice video i like your videos so i watch it all the time so keep it up!

[@ArduinowithSahasrad]

Amazing tip from rufus bro THX

[@j0ppi]

it may sounds wierd but, i love your voice , and your video ofc (:

[@pascalczasny]

3:45 "...restore this Mac to its factory settings" proofs you're just human, too! Love your videos, keep up the great work!

[@SaadO821]

Nice Michael Awesome Video 🎉❤

[@1020shaf]

In my experience I have managed to do an upgrade from Windows 7 to 11 within the OS. I had to do a command where it loaded an alternative Windows Setup installer thinking it was Windows Server and chose the upgrade and keep all my files and apps option, everything went smoothly. You can find the command from the videos on KZbin showing you how to upgrade from Windows 10 to 11 23H2 on unsupported hardware, if you’re interested.

[@eugiblisscast]

For some reason, these Alienware devices look so amazing to me

[@chrism869]

I like these older ones ,I was gonna get a used one before I considered getting something else cause my old laptop was a piece of crap

[@Y-PermCubing]

incase anyone is wondering, he has a channel member ship so he gets to see videos sooner than poor people

[@shirleydotxml]

@@Y-PermCubingwhat a rude way to classify people that aren't members

[@hfc2x]

@@shirleydotxml Why the fuck are your parents allowing you on the internet unsupervised?

[@andylaw3222]

​@@shirleydotxmlIt's a bot

[@josepheduardo3809]

Hello MJD! I'm currently halfway the video and I think you should try tinkering with Backwards compatibility feature for the setup.exe on the GPU drivers I did that on a really old notebook laptop (it shipped with XP and I tried to update it to Windows 10 just for funsies) It managed to install the GPU driver with it set to Windows 7 compatibility (that one setting on properties)

[@bpmhvh]

Love these type of videos

[@silverswandev]

Can you try Vegas pro or whatever editing software you use.. that would be intresting! love your videos - keep it up!

[@zeliminator666]

This helped so much!!!

[@GodSaveTheUnitedStates]

MJD makes my day better.

[@DerekWitt]

Ah, an MJD video with Action Retro-esque shenanigans! Yes, please! :)

[@gooberboy69420]

damn this as an early release, 30 mins ago, usually it’s when i’m asleep

[@Jorge.ALXNDR]

i feel so at home watching your videos

[@ItsJustFelix]

Wow, I did not know that existed in rufus, going to keep that in mind!

[@inkballpro]

new mjd video.... day instantly better

[@mctogo001]

literally

[@BilisNegra]

The dedicated graphics not working is quite a considerable downside this being a gaming laptop that will therefore perform as a budget laptop of the era with integrated graphics only. But on the other side more of the dedicated software works than one would expect. By the way, it's never a wrong occasion to stress how mind-blowingly awesome Rufus is. It's a miracle application.

[@Odd-Bike]

Good video, it looks like the mjd curse didn’t strike all that much this time

[@Creativezito]

well, i higher recommend to you install the modified intel gma 4500 m / mhd extreme plus 2 drivers made by nightmayor, even supports windows 11 as well, i'm being using on windows 10 but i have seen people installing it and working, and it's a really nice alternative than nvidia's unsupported geforce drivers on this one but anyway, just stick to windows 7 if you really want drivers working, but that was a nice experiment

[@benkilla]

Wow i had this exact boot loop problem with the nvidia drivers. Never thought id find someone else in the same boat. Such a pain in the ass!

[@djtomoy]

You have such lovely hands 🙌

[@connerwilliams668]

I love to watch your videos on the weekend

[@kivancatlipr]

yeah

[@connerwilliams668]

​@@kivancatlipr yep

[@Aslyuriel]

You know you're old when he says "no modern titles" and you're forced to come to terms with the fact that half life 2 episode 2 is not, infact, new.

[@pineappleroad]

With the bypass microsoft account option in Rufus, if you have the system connected to the internet during installation, the bypass doesn’t actually work (but if you select the option to create a local account, then it won’t give you the prompt for the Microsoft account regardless) There is a way to add a bypass that works regardless of if there is an internet connection (where it will prompt you to create a local account), but rufus doesn’t use that

[@washingLad2014SamsungDestroy]

wow great vidoe as always just one question is this laptop have a touch screen

[@GlitterGlue69]

How funny and coincidental it is that a few days ago I just did the same thing you did in this video for my old hp elitebook 850 g2 laptop I got from my dad a while back that I now use on the go. 😂 Love your vids tho. Can't wait for another one. 😉👍❤️

[@Brody._.Bates.]

I know this sounds really weird but I really like the way your voice sounds. 😭 It's just so calming. Not even joking.

[@philtkaswahl2124]

"Definitely not the most playable that I've ever seen Portal." Gotta love that Michael MJD understatement.

[@Phonk.Madness.]

hello Michael! i am a new subscriber and i noticed te experiments you do on these machines its quite awsome to see how this experiment turned out it is a shame that you were not able to use its org gpu and integrated graphics is what you are stuck with but you mentioned that the gpu driver is not compatible with win 11 how about win 10?

[@maydoxx]

Michael really needs the best award for being the best tech youtuber

[@911delorean]

Ran into this recently too. Had a old laptop similar age, ended up disconnecting from the internet and downloading the latest driver for the GPU that I could. Installing it first, then rebooting to see if windows could still boot. That seemed to solve my bootloop problem.

[@blockbuster36061]

MichaelMJDs videos cure my depression

[@Welvrt]

Great vid

[@adamiskandarai]

12:40 You could try enabling both "Show accent color on Start and Taskbar" and "Show accent color on title bars and windows borders" and see if it applied custom accent color. I tried it when I was testing Madobe Nanami theme on Windows 11 a while ago and it did apply custom accent color.

[@StephenBaylor]

I encountered the same boot loop issue when installing Windows 11 on a 2010 MacBook Pro with a Core 2 Duo and NVIDIA graphics. To resolve it, I downloaded the graphics driver directly from NVIDIA before allowing Windows to install its driver via update. This approach worked well with the NVIDIA graphics. Note that this laptop didn't have graphics switching. On my iMac running Windows 11, I had to disable one of the graphics adapters to boot into something other than Safe Mode. I opted to disable the integrated graphics and use the discrete card, which has been working great. Again, I used the NVIDIA driver instead of the Microsoft-provided one.

[@gergom.8310]

Well, aside from the Portal 2 spoilers that I've haven't completed yet, nice video

[@Kykof]

I love the design of these Alienwares, they have such an amazing design in my opinion.

[@Jamasen]

Switchable graphics from the early 2010s is absolute hell. So many vendor specific HWID's that didn't exist in normal Nvidia drivers. You could try manually installing the newest ones specifically from DELL/Alienware, even though they're probably Windows 7 drivers, sometimes it just works.

[@tostadorafuriosa69]

i had a sony vaio with an nvidia 330m and it was so shit having to get tye drivers from them

[@cobra_65]

I have a sony vaio vpccw16fa (core 2 duo p8700 and a nvidia geforce GT230M) I managed to upgrade to windows 11 when it was released. The support ended for 200 series at around 2016 windows 10 versions were there at that time so it can work for windows 11 which is basically a modified version of windows 10

[@idk_knowwhyicreatedthis]

That is so cool!😀

[@dimitrijemitojovicic965]

Cool Video 😎

[@arnox4554]

You should see how the OG Windows 7 install works in comparison and also throw AntiX Linux on it too afterwards. AntiX runs so absurdly light while being very usable and accessible as well.

[@cydragon2.099]

For gaming laptops to get the best performance on some games that are more meant for desktop play by an external monitor while for games that are optimized enough to know the hardware you can then do built in or external screen

[@Combo7z]

The camera quality is just perfect the NGL vibes ahhhhh

[@ZipplyZane]

I would not be surprised at all if there are user-created drivers for the that Nvidia mGPU. At minimum, I would probably try finding the latest drivers that do support it on an older OS version, and try to install that. If I get an error saying it's not allowed, I'd even tweak the inf file and try disabling driver signing temporarily to see if it will install. I have had success with this in running Windows 7 drivers on Windows 10. So, even if it doesn't work on Windows 11, it might be worth trying Windows 10, since that is at least a current OS.

[@guaiqueritech]

Great video. Does that laptop only go up to 4gb of ram? That seems a bit low, even for 2010, specially on a gaming laptop (MacBook Pros of the time got to 8 -16Gb back then, I believe) Despite it being mostly not recommended, I suggest you run a third party driver updater; I personally use Driver Booster and it has solved issues for me more often than not (uninstall after updating, though)

[@danialonderstal3564]

If I remember correctly, you needed alienware OSD so you could switch between intergrated with discrete or discrete only GPU. There was a key combo to switch

[@foregonereality]

Did you try the Windows 7 Dell Driver for Nvidia? Sometimes OEMs do strange things to their cards that can cause OEM drivers to go crazy - especially when the part isn't fully supported anymore.

[@DarkTails256]

I didnt know caseoh knew michael mjd

[@sokoloft3]

I think I have an original boot media for that specific alienware if you want it. Like the physical USB. I think at one point I tried messing around with it to add usb 3.0 support but I'm pretty sure I booted into it not too long ago and it still works fine.

[@fredytexis1]

My acer Aspire V5 that runs an i3 and upgraded the ram from 4gb to 16gb and a 1TB SSD running windows 10. It runs like a champ for a computer from early 2012. I love that thing it handles short Photoshop and Illustrator Mock ups no problem.

[@vadnegru]

The fact that w11 could run those old apps (and they work as designed) is just awesome thing. If you compare it to mac that usually has zero backwards compatibility this is twice the awesome.

[@MrKillswitch88]

The ngreedia drivers for this machine are a source of frustration and ended up selling mine years back. I do recommend models with an mxm slot as one can use currently supported cards be it with some effort and expense.

[@trevgauntletneu_gaming]

Any updates on the Compaq Portable repair? I'm seeing all a bunch of new videos but not one mention of the Compaq Portable

[@tjnucnuc]

I used my 2009 dell xps i7 desktop with an updated 4 gig 980 and it played pretty much every modern game I threw at it extremely well. That was back in like 2017 but still lol.

[@tostadorafuriosa69]

i had some 2009 hp compaq with a core2quad maxxed out and i could play minecraft on it

[@MrIzaiah2007YT]

4:44 Same, except I use it once to check the weather.

[@danielleimhofer88]

Cool Laptop. It would be interesting with pop os!

[@burts06]

I love it when Michael MJD tries to run modern software on old outdated hardware. Can't wait for the next $5 windows 98 pc install!

[@peteredeborg3385]

This is quite intriguing, gives me an idea as to how much resources the new Windows takes and uses from the hardware. I would be interested in seeing this laptop run the same games on Windows 7 and Linux(Mint, Fedora or Manjaro). I have a hunch that the results will wary wildly when Linux is in the picture. Since development to support legacy hardware is still on-going in Linux.....But not all legacy hardware......

[@near5148]

I love your videos

[@Flaretale52]

Funny enough, The Dell G15 that I mainly use actually has an Alienware Control Center for some reason. It IS a gaming laptop so I can see it, and It runs Windows 11 fine (which it CAME PRE-INSTALLED when I bought it new) but eventually, I need to install a second SSD. Also if you know where to look, you can TECHNICALLY apply Windows 7 themes to Windows 11. Theme sounds like Garden, Beaches, and even custom sound can STILL be added (barring startup and shutdown).

[@norbertcsorba4639]

Wait so with rufus you can get the usuall security updates? I have a Skylake era Alienware 17 and i realy dont want to abandone it just because it will not be secure in the future

[@dlc803]

I love how when you relaunch rocket league at 21:58 , even the game window says it's "cooked" 😂 and then in brackets it explains that the slang "cooked" means not responding

[@7Zeb]

Do a video on restoring the system

[@SpikeTheHedgehog656]

2:53 that OEM is crazy

[@Keineahnung4015]

I did have similar issues with the GPU off my old Dell laptop as Well. After installation of W10 it would always work a few minutes untill Windows automaticly updated the Graphics Driver. After wihich it would freeze and Shutdown. The only way to fix it was just to disable the GPU in the device manager. It even froze after i manually installed the correct Driver. Asides from that the performance in W10 is still really good, the only thing it struggels with is KZbin Videos over 1080p and battery life even with a new Battery. Still using it to this Day.

[@HIKKG]

Dude, in case you didn't know, you can disable automatic driver updates in Windows so that they don't make your dGPU not work.

[@burnedmozzarella]

same thing here with my latitude 7490 with UHD 620, the difference is when i use linux, i need to add extra kernel boot parameter "i915_enable.dc=0" to fix it edit: it's either that or i915.enable_dc=0

[@tom611]

Huh. I've not been able to download Windows directly from Rufus for quite some time, (since at least 4.4 was introduced, even though older versions don't work now either) as the button is always 'Select' each time I fire it up. Any idea how to get it going again?

[@eternalrest2859]

Now before i even start watching. I own this laptop (I have a AW collection from 2010 - 2021) and it works almost perfect under windows 11. If you have any issues, its your specific machine. This series of AW laptops from the 11 - the 18 were very well built machines and used extremely reliable hardware. HEnce why there are so many still around. Most other laptops from this era barely made it 5 years. I have the M17r4 on the desk next to me now just for youtube while im gaming on my deasktop. Love this series of machine.

[@ginoantenucci6424]

Note: you can remove the requirement of a tpm 2.0, etc using the command prompt in windows 11 setup that is what I did in my personal machine without a tpm 2 chip

[@TheGermanJay]

Awesome, is that download-feature of rufus new? never saw (recognized) it O.O

[@james141111]

I have one of these somewhere, got it from new, it was pretty powerful in its day, but the screen was crap even for the time

[@jonpeley]

I have a Dell laptop from 2014 with an i5 and 16 Gb of RAM which is perfectly usable with Windows 10 nowadays but it's out of the compatibility list. Knowing that 10 will be unsupported the next year I found this video useful when it's time to make the upgrade to 11.

[@andrive]

Make sure you disable Enforce driver signature before installing the drivers

[@pandaboy6621]

I was looking for a way to install Windows 11 on my HP Envy laptop and had no idea that Rufus had these express setup options. My AMD CPU isn't supported, but I do have TPM 2.0 on my computer. If I use this method, will I still get Windows updates?

[@mgproducts8693]

I believe that if you downloaded the nvidia driver from the folder it would have the windows update gpu driver as an optional update from my experience with it

[@theroyalaustralian]

There is a way around the issue of being unable to boot a machine with Windows Update provided hardware drivers, and this is to simply use Windows Update Manager, and disable/hide both display drivers for the iGPU and the GT 335M.

[@bryceybam]

I have been watching you since 2022