Installing Windows Again on A Spare Drive for Something Important
The sudden diagnosis of having a silent, chronic illness is forcing me to step back and re-evaluate everything. I have to take a hard look at both my long-term and short-term goals, deciding which ones to drop, either permanently or just for the time being.
This condition, paired with mounting debts and increasing financial strain, have me contemplate using some of the spare time I have on WFH status to make some extra cash, without burning out.
Yes, I know, being sick means that I shouldn't stress myself too much, but money doesn't fall from trees or come out of thin air. Rather than worry about things, why not find ways to make money?
That's exactly what I'm setting out to do right now. It's time for a side hustle.
After asking around I found this small local outfit that's hiring through their Facebook group. They're about 10 miles away from me but work is purely remote, and the only time people get to see each other in person is during their Christmas party.
I hopped into their on-boarding page and found some information on the software that they use. It turns out to be a Windows only program, with no Linux or even Mac versions of it. Aside from that, there is also some unpaid training to go through first before being accepted.
I tested it on Linux and ran it through Wine and it ran on first try. But not being a part of the training program yet, I had no access to the training files to practice on.
Then I thought that should I get accepted, I should also have a backup in case the software runs into some problems while running in Linux through Wine. And the best way to run a Windows program is to install it in Windows, where else?
I have a few extra hard drives here, but in 2.5-inch 7200 RPM HDD form, pulled out of decommissioned office laptops and sold cheap in many online stores here. They're not as fast as SSDs, but still adequate for my needs. Besides, buying new drives nowadays costs twice what they used to, so these ones will do. At least for now, until I have extra funds for a 1TB SATA SSD.
It's time to install. But, first things first, check the drives if they still work. And, satisfied that they all work, it was time to decide on which Windows version (10 or 11) and flavor (Pro, Home, etc.) to install.
My bedroom desktop, which is exactly this machine I use for all my personal browsing, including my Hive activities, is a very old machine by today's standards. Specifically, it's an AMD A8-7680 with 16GB of DDR3 RAM, and a GTX 750Ti videocard. It has MX Linux 25.2 as my main OS and Ubuntu Studio 24.04 LTS as my secondary.
As for my real work, I have a 3D workstation in the living room. It's a Ryzen 7 4750G and RTX 2060 Super system supplied by my employer. But I cannot use it for my personal activities, hence the need for this extra computer.
My MX Linux (top) and Ubuntu Studio (bottom) desktops
This machine originally ran Windows 10 Pro, which is still on the SSD which I refuse to wipe yet, because I still have to go through it and see if there are files that I might still need someday. And since this computer is not qualified for an upgrade to Windows 11, I decided to just keep the SSD in storage and install Linux as my daily driver.
Knowing that Windows 11 won't install on this machine without doing any of the various tricks found online to install Windows 11 on unqualified hardware, I decided to search more online for a solution to my problem.
Turns out that I didn't need to look anymore. The answer was actually in one of my drives, ISOs of certain versions of Windows 10 and 11 that I had downloaded some time ago and forgotten about. All I had to do was fire up Rufus to put it in a USB flash drive.
The OS I chose is Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC, a special version of Windows that you can install on older processors that aren't supported by the regular versions of Windows 11, namely Home and Pro.
Now, this is not an in-depth review of this particular version of Windows 11. I don't have much experience with the regular edition of Windows 11 yet to make a comparison between these two versions.
So if you're looking for that kind of information, Google is your friend. This post is just to let you know that you can still install a special version of Windows 11 on your old computer, provided that its processor is an Intel 1st Generation Core i-series (released late 2008), or an AMD processor that was released around 2012 and after.
What is Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC?
It is a specialized, enterprise-grade edition of Windows 11 designed for fixed-purpose, mission-critical hardware like ATMs, medical equipment, and kiosks that must operate reliably for a decade or more. "LTSC" stands for Long-Term Servicing Channel. This means it receives only security patches and no feature updates for 10 years.
It is light on resources because it has been stripped of the consumer bloatware like, Xbox features, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, Cortana, Copilot AI, telemetry, ads, and MS games that the regular versions of Windows 11 installs on your machine.
And for these reasons it has become the favorite of gamers and enthusiasts who are looking to squeeze every ounce of performance they can get from their machines.
Quick Comparison Table
| Feature | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Supports Older CPUs | |||
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| System Bloat | |||
| Microsoft Store | |||
| Update Behavior | |||
| TPM |
And here are a few pictures of it. If you've been using Windows 11 for a while now you will see that this particular edition still looks like the one you are using. Where this one differs is under the hood.
A fresh install of any edition of Windows 11 will have a thick taskbar by default, which is somewhat annoying to look at and work with, as it takes up some screen real estate that's best reclaimed for use of whatever application you are going to run. To remedy this eyesore you can either set the taskbar to autohide, or by reducing its thickness by installing the popular taskbar tweak tool, Windhawk. Then I added the Taskbar height and icon size mod to it to resize the taskbar and icons contained in it.
As you can see in this picture my taskbar is now slim and not taking up a lot of bottom screen space. I've been setting up my taskbar like this since my Windows 7 days, and it's also how I do it in Linux.
This one is my favorite reasons for choosing this edition. As you can see it says that there are no AI components currently installed. And this is the default. You can add those features if you want, and everything else that's missing.
I have been using this new installation for more than two weeks now, and I must say it has lived up to my expectations. It may not be on an SSD but it stilll boots fast enough for me. And the apps I've installed on it run well and have not given me any problems yet. The real test will come once I start doing that side hustle on it.
This installation will only be used for specific tasks, and will not be my main personal creative, productivity, and entertainment platform. However, I do like to test Web3 games, and since some of them are only available as Windows or Mac apps, maybe this machine will be a testbed for Windows-based Web3 gaming too.
So, there you have it, folks. This will be all for now about this special edition of Windows 11. And as I've mentioned previously, this isn't a review but just a heads-up that you can have Windows 11 on your ageing desktop or laptop, but in a form stripped down of all the annoying extra features, telemetry, and many of the "bells and whistles" of the regular editions.
All images are copyright of the author, except for credited content, which belong to their rightful owners.