I love it WindowsNote the irony. I switched to Ubuntu almost two decades ago now, and I've hardly looked back. I spent a lot of time dual-booting, but eventually got rid of it because of the potential problems it could cause to my Linux installation. I do currently have a virtual machine just in case, and an SSD for my Steam Deck because there are games that don't run well on Linux. But it gives me more headaches than joy.
My SSD for the Deck does update without problems, but my virtual machine had only been applying security patches for a couple of months. Today I logged into the Windows VM, which I update from time to time and want to keep because there are times when I do things like signing Kodi for my iPhone, and I saw the screenshot: a message that says “Your version of Windows has reached end of service”. Yes, “ervicio”, without S.
Update Windows when it says it has ended its service
When this message appears, what it is actually telling us is that our computer is no longer compatible with the latest version of Windows, so it can no longer be updated. It is also indirectly telling us “hey, buy another PC ”. The “best”, very much in quotation marks, thing to do is What they say: buy another fully compatible PC and thus avoid all the problems. But the outlay is not always convenient nor necessary. Is there another solution? In theory, and at least at the time of writing this article, yes.
Steps to follow
Before continuing, or the first step we have to take if we want to update when in theory we cannot, is make a backup of everything important. Even in official updates we can find some bugs. With everything important saved, what would remain is:
- Let's go to the download page of Windows 11. There we will find a tool to check if our equipment is compatible, but it is better to ignore it.
- In the “Download a disk image…” section, click on the drop-down menu, select Windows 11, and then click on “Download now.” Before downloading the image, you will need to choose a language.
- Once the image is on our computer, we right-click on it and select “Mount”. This will open the file manager and we will see its contents.
- Now there are two options. In one, we copy the contents into a folder, then go to “Sources”, delete the appraiserres.dll file, create an empty text file with the same name and put it in the same folder. The theory is that this prevents it from checking if we have TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot enabled, but it didn’t work for me. The second option is to launch the server installation with:
setup.exe /Product Server
NOTE: The above command is written if you are in the same folder as setup.exe. Another way to do it is as in the screenshot, which has been dragging setup.exe to a terminal and adding /Product Server after it.
Installation Process
- This will open the installer. In the first window, click “Next”.
- In the second, "Accept."
- Next, we indicate what we want to keep. Since I only want to update, I indicate everything, but there are also options to only personal files or nothing (restore). Then, "Next".
- We will see a summary and now we have to click on “Install”.
- We wait. It will take a while and restart several times. Once the process is complete, the update will be applied.
Being Windows, what could go wrong?
Well, everything, really. It worked for me and I already have my virtual machine updated, but I don't know to what extent I was lucky. In fact, During the black screen that ends the process after restarting, I saw an error whose message I did not capture. On the other hand, this worked for me today, and in the future Microsoft might block the server option as well.
In any case, what is explained here is the best way to update Windows 11 when the friendly Satya Nadella and his people recommend that we give ourselves a Christmas present in the form of a PC.