Change CPU Information
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At work we are starting to evaluate XCP-ng as a replacement for ESXI.
As part of this we are also doing a Windows 11 upgrade test on there. Unfortunately, our test device is an old Optiplex with an i5-6500.
I am using XCP-ng 8.3 Beta 2, the vTPM is working great, however the CPU is being reported (correctly) as a i5-6500. Is there any way to change the CPU to identify as a supported processor? I read some ways to do it with a xl.conf file, but not sure of the syntax. I believe something with the CPUID?
Yes, I know that there are some Bypasses for this to work correctly within Windows. But we want this to be as equal to production as possible. Even though the production machines are fully and correctly supported.
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I'm not sure that will be even enough for Windows to be tricked, but I'm not even sure to understand why it's needed in the first place?
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Windows isn't going to be tricked into being happy about the CPU just by changing the reported model. It cross-checks real features, and you simply can't fake those up.
There is no ability in XenServer/XCP-ng to configure this, and I have no intention to offer people the ability to shoot themselves in the foot like this.
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@olivierlambert
Pretty much we have been upgrading old computers. The old Optiplexes we can do whatever we wanted. We decided to set up a lab environment to be able to test things. I of course being a XCP-ng enthusiast decided the lab should include XCP-ng.One of the first things we are labbing out is preparing for a Windows 11 upgrade. Of our production fleet. Doing in in-place upgrade.
Windows 11 requires an 8th gen or newer processor and will fail if that condition isn't met. There are ways to bypass that check (a registry tweak), but I'm not really wanting to use it for the test.
@andyhhp
I figured... But worth a shot -
Windows 11 requires an 8th gen or newer processor and will fail if that condition isn't met.
Ouch
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@ajpri1998 Don't despair. Also, don't go crazy trying to make the processor look like a newer one in order to be acceptable to Windows 11. The registry bypasses work. I am personally running an Intel Haswell era laptop: UEFI secure boot, but no TPM, i7-4700HQ, 16GB RAM; it runs Windows 11 Pro perfectly. Believe me, as a long time Microsoft user and enterprise customer, if Satya Nadella didn't want your old box to run Windows 11, it wouldn't. Microsoft provides this workaround so technical users can run the latest Windows until THEY are ready to upgrade to new hardware. My home computing lab is 3 x Dell OptiPlex 7040 SFF eBay used bargains (i7-6700 CPUs) running XCP-ng 8.3 with Xen Kernel 4.17 and a diverse mix of Linux and Windows VMs including Windows 11. It's an evolution to a more secure computing future. We're all on the journey at our own pace. Relax and enjoy it. Use the hardware you have. It's "new enough."
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@XCP-ng-JustGreat
We ended up doing the Registry bypass. After that was done it worked great!We also tried things on our ESXi cluster, but due to licensing, couldn't do the vTPM. Also made sure to mention to my IT Manager about Olivier's 20-minute response to my forum post.
Very much appreciated - hopefully I can get us to switch over.
