Today I needed to install Windows 11 on a late-model Intel-based Mac mini. The Mac mini has an 8th gen Intel Core i3 CPU, 8GB RAM and 250GB SSD. It supports everything Windows 11 needs, including secure boot, with the exception of TPM 2.0.

I can’t use Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows 11 directly as it’s not supported and the Boot Camp app can’t find the necessary drivers to download from Apple. As such, I’ve had to first install Windows 10 and then upgrade to Windows 11.

This complicates matters as I’m not then booting directly into the Windows installer, I’m having to first run the PC Health Check app to verify system requirements (which fails, of course) and then run the Windows 11 Installation Assistant.

The Windows 11 Installation Assistant then refuses to upgrade to Windows 11 as the PC Health Check app doesn’t pass.

Fortunately there’s a workaround for this too. After running the PC Health Check app, it will set a registry key that determines the upgrade eligibility. You may be able to set this key directly without first downloading and running the PC Health Check app, however I haven’t tested this.

After running the PC Health Check app, open Regedit once more and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\PCHC

Set UpgradeEligibility to 1

Then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup and set AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU to 1

In my case, the MoSetup key didn’t already exist so I created it and then created a DWORD value for AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU and set it to 1.

You can then run the Windows 11 Installation Assistant and proceed with the upgrade.