WhyNotWin11 is a better replacement for Windows 11's PC Health Check

An open-source application called WhyNotWin11 acts as a better drop-in replacement for Microsoft's PC Health Check app to determine if your hardware is compatible with Windows 11.

This week, Microsoft announced that the next version of Windows is Windows 11 would be the next version of Windows and that it would be released as a free upgrade this fall.

As part of this announcement, Microsoft also published Windows 11's minimum hardware requirements needed to upgrade or install Windows 11.

Microsoft released the PC Health Check app to check your computer's hardware and tell you if it is compatible with Windows 11.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's first version of the PC Health Check app did not tell users what hardware was failing tests, leading to even more confusion.

For many people, the issue was that they did not have a required TPM 2 compatible security processor enabled on their computer. As a result, Microsoft released an updated PC Health Check app that specifically warned users that a TPM 2 device was missing.

PC Health Check App reporting a TPM 2 not installed

Unfortunately, the PC Health Check app is not as informative when other failed tests.

For example, the message below is pretty useless, and a CPU may still be considered incompatible even though it meets the requirements in terms of CPU cores and speed.

WhyNotWin11 fills in the gaps

This lack of information is where a new open-source tool named WhyNotWin11 shines, as it provides a far greater amount of detail, letting you know exactly what hardware is incompatible.

Instead of just giving vague responses like the PC Health Check tool, WhyNotWin11 will list each requirement and show where your computer's hardware is lacking.

WhyNotWin11 displaying hardware results

As you can see from the results above, WhyNotWin11 gives detailed information about what particular hardware category is failing so that you can resolve it with new hardware or by enabling settings on your motherboard.

This is especially useful for CPUs, where PC Health Check states a CPU is not compatible even though it meets the required processor speed and number of cores.

Microsoft may have marked this as incompatible because it does not have a built-in TPM 2 processor. However, users can install a dedicated TPM processor on their motherboard to resolve that missing piece, thus making all hardware compatible.

Having all of this information at their fingertips allows users to determine for sure what hardware is failing so that they can work around it and still install Windows 11.

It should also be noted that even though your hardware may not be 100% compatible, it is likely not going to prevent Windows 11 from installing on your device as long as most of your hardware is compatible.

The nice thing about WhyNotWin11 is that it is an open-source AutoIt script, so you can see exactly what the program is looking for to run your own tests from the command line.

You can download a precompiled WhyNotWin11 executable from GitHub or build your executable from the source code.

H/T Deskmodder.de