Windows 10 is almost dead, but Flyby11 can help your old PC upgrade to Windows 11

It's been a long time coming, but at the end of 2025, Windows 10 will officially reach its end-of-life status. Sure, users will have the option to pay an extra fee to extend the support period, but for most people, this will likely be the end of the line in terms of support, meaning you're that much more prone to cyberattacks that may discovered from that point forward.

Staying up to date is extremely important, and while Microsoft wants you to pay up for a new PC, you might not have to do that. And no, we're not talking about switching to Linux either (this time). Enter Flyby11, a tool that makes it easy for Windows 10 users to upgrade to Windows 11 by bypassing the arbitrary system requirements Microsoft has put in place. It's a simple tool, but it could seriously extend the life of your PC, so you should check it out.

Leveraging Windows Server

It's much less restrictive

The way Flyby11 works is that it uses a feature in the Windows 11 setup that makes it behave more like the Windows Server setup. Unlike Windows 11, Windows Server doesn't have the same requirements for installation, such as TPM 2.0 or a specific CPU model, so the installer won't check for these things on your PC. Still, FlyBy11 will install the regular version of Windows 11. This Windows Server trick only deceives the installer, but the final result will be the same.

Flyby11 patches your ISO file and mounts it automatically, so all you need to do is run the setup to begin upgrading. It's a fairly straightforward process, all things considered, and it solves a major pain point with Windows 11.

A recent version of the program goes even further with a new upgrade mode that skips driver compatibility checks and attempts to automatically migrate your current drivers to the new installation, which can improve the final results for some PCs, too. Ultimately, this solution can help the vast majority of Windows 10 users upgrade to Windows 11.

On top of patching an ISO for in-place upgrades, Flyby11 can also directly patch a USB installation drive, so you can use it to perform a clean install of Windows 11 on multiple PCs that may not be officially supported.

It can't fix everything

There's no way to bypass POPCNT

As much as FlyBy11 can help older PCs upgrade to Windows 11, it's not a cure-all. One of the restrictions Windows 11 imposes is support for the POPCNT instruction, which has been supported by basically every processor since 2010 or so. This, however, is a hard limit, and Windows 11 simply will not run without this feature. If you somehow manage to install Windows 11, it won't boot, so there's nothing FlyBy11 can do about that.

Thankfully, this mostly affects very old PCs, and there's a very good chance you've replaced those models already. If not, they likely wouldn't run Windows 11 very well, either, so you might want to look at Linux instead.

Should you upgrade this way?

You may run into issues

The idea of extending the life of your Windows PC is certainly enticing, and getting security updates for longer can only be a good thing. However, there must be a reason Microsoft isn't allowing users to upgrade to Windows 11 normally. And while the idea of making more money by selling new PCs certainly helps, when Windows 11 was first announced, Microsoft did provide a few justifications, such as TPM and Secure Boot being important security features.

Notably, the company also mentioned that the processors it chose not to support at the time were 52% more likely to experience kernel mode crashes, whereas the supported CPUs were 99.8% crash-free. That is to say that, if you choose to upgrade this way, there's a good chance you may run into more crashes and issues with your computer. What's more, Windows 11 is just a more resource-consuming OS, so the higher requirements generally help ensure a smoother experience. If your PC is old and relatively low-end by today's standards, you may have a less-than-optimal experience on Windows 11.

For some people, especially those who are more technically inclined, installing a Linux distribution could be a better option. Many Linux distros get supported for a long time, and support for older components is kept for much longer, so even very old PCs can still run just fine. Sure, there is a learning curve with Linux, but if you have the know-how and willingness to adapt, it can be a better solution for many people.

FlyBy11 is a good solution for Windows diehards

If you want to stick with Windows and you want to keep getting security updates, but you're not ready to get rid of your old computer just yet, FlyBy11 may just be the solution you need. It will get you on the latest version of Windows 11, and you should be able to get security updates for the foreseeable future. Stability and performance may be a concern for some older and lower-end PCs, but that might be better than being unprotected on the internet.

That being said, I'd say checking out Linux is also a great option, especially if you're well-versed with computers. Distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint offer very familiar experiences with plenty of benefits over Windows, and they're more likely to work better with your hardware, since drivers have actually been developed for it. Whichever option you go with, however, you can rest assured your old PC doesn't have to go in the trash yet.