I recently needed to do a clean install of Windows onto some specialised hardware – a PC that was custom built as a controller for some industrial equipment and the onboard SSD had died.

As it turns out, the onboard SSD didn’t helpfully go into read-only mode and just up and died instead. I was then a bit behind the eight-ball when it came to reinstall Windows.

I wasn’t even sure if this device ran Windows 10 or Windows 11, so after determining it had an 8th generation Intel CPU, I decided to go ahead with Windows 11. The BIOS on the Gigabyte motherboard said it supported TPM, but didn’t have a hardware TMP however, and didn’t seem to have the option to activate a software TPM.

I knew that there are a number of different ways to bypass the checks, but most of the searches I did referred to making a modified USB installer. This wasn’t an option for me as I already had a Windows 11 installer on USB and no spare PC to modify it, other than the one in front of me with no operating system installed.

I came across this thread however which got me up and running.

https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/bypass-windows-11-tpm-requirement

The procedure was as follows:

Boot into the unmodified Windows installer on the USB.
As soon as you get into the installer, hit Shift+F10 to open a CMD window.

From the CMD window, run Regedit.

In Regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup

Create a new registry key under Setup called LabConfig

Within this new registry key, LabConfig, create two DWORD values and set them both equal to 1
BypassTPMCheck
BypassSecureBootCheck

If you also want to bypass the RAM requirement (although I’d suggest that your experience running Windows with low RAM is definitely going to be less than optimal), add another DWORD value for BypassRAMCheck.

Quit out of Regedit and continue with installer – you should be good to go.