Windows 10 LTSC to Windows 11 (original) (raw)

December 19, 2024, 1:29pm 1

Hello Spiceworks Experts,

I was wondering with the imminent closure of Windows 10 and variants coming up next year October 2025, what are people doing about their Windows 10 LTSC machines, extended support is till 2027, but we are wanting to go to Windows 11, but other than a full rebuild from scratch, is there a way of updating a Windows 10 LTSC machine to Windows 11, on the fly so to speak so that you do not have to completely wipe the machine? I only ask as we have over 40 users on Windows 10 LTSC and wonder if we need to panic and re-image them or wait until a solution presents itself.
Any help would be great.
Regards
Rav

Rod-IT (Rod-IT) December 19, 2024, 1:46pm 2

There is no direct in-place upgrade for this.

I would have already started your migration plans

mrmacit (RAM IT) December 19, 2024, 2:01pm 3

Anything is upgradeable with the purchase of new license keys…

Der-Geist (Der Geist) December 19, 2024, 2:06pm 4

There’s several different things to consider. I had understood that LTSC was for special use cases. These aren’t your daily use PCs for your employees, correct?
Win-11 is pretty tedious to deal with. It’s RAM intensive. M.2 or SSD speed drives.
Past that, for your site, you’re going to need time to tune out all the commercial nic-nac bits Microsoft stuffed into the system. Even with Enterprise promotion, there’s still an irritating amount of settings that require registry hacks. I suspect you’ll experience similar issues. Saying that, you’ll likely need months of testing, limited roll-outs and yet more testing.
Consider picking up and rolling out 3-5 systems for testing and tweaking and further testing.

Rod-IT (Rod-IT) December 19, 2024, 2:09pm 5

But no direct upgrade, so with or without license keys, you cannot in-place upgrade Windows 10 LTSC to Windows 11. Not directly.

uselessinfomine (UselessInfoMine) December 19, 2024, 2:52pm 6

Yeah - I’m in the middle of doing this. About 180 devices migrating, around 50 to go.

Intune W11 box for user before they arrive > Swap for existing W10 box belonging to user > Wipe W10 box and reimage to W11 > Repeat.

We got through about a third of them by attrition (leavers, new starters, etc.), and now it’s just a bit of a slog while we pull in those who still have W10 who don’t come into the office very often. It’s not so bad for us as we’re set up on Autopilot, Intune and OneDrive, so it’s a few hours of progress bars (or less, if you force certain procedures), and the user has their stuff on the new box and goes away happy.

mrmacit (RAM IT)

December 19, 2024, 2:54pm 7

I’ve been out of Desktop for a couple of years now, and we are not on the LTSC model, but maybe this is helpful. Appears you will touch them all to get the upgraded.

In-Place Update from Windows 10 LTSC to Windows 11 Enterprise

Rod-IT (Rod-IT) December 19, 2024, 3:01pm 8

Quest-John (Quest John) December 19, 2024, 4:26pm 9

There is a difference between could and should and would…

Many thanks for all the suggestions, I will give the YouTube article a go, we have around 50 Windows 10 LTSC machines and would be good to do an in-place upgrade rather than a full wipe, we will eventually get all these in ‘auto-pilot’, but the business wants to do it the traditional way at the moment, I will of course let you know if successful or not.
Regards
R

cerbere (Cerbere) January 2, 2025, 6:16pm 11

Soooo . . . How’d it go?

pbrain (Juanoflo) February 11, 2025, 8:00pm 12

How did it go?

adrian_ych (adrian_ych) February 12, 2025, 6:11am 13

But Which Edition of Win11 are you using ?

You can “upgrade” Win10 LTSC to Win10 Pro (if you have Win10 Pro licenses) then upgrade to Win11 Pro…
You cannot convert Win11 Pro to Win11 LTSC
There is a diff between Win11 Pro vs Win11 LTSC
You are not legally allowed to reimage Win11 as Win11 is no longer sold under MSVL (unless for VDI or Win11 Enterprise or LTSC) and OEM & Retail do not allow reimage rights. You are reimaging for at least 180 devices, the repercussions if audited(MS or BSA etc) can be quite serious.