Lenovo M725s AMD 2400G upgradable to run Windows 11?

[CapLeaker]

I’ve got this Lenovo M725s with an AMD Ryzen 2400G here on the bench. Supposedly it’s only good for win 10. Win 11 doesn’t support the Ryzen 2400G. However Win 11 does support the Ryzen 2600?
there are a lot of CPUs that fit the AM4 socket, but this mother board based on a 450 series does not support the Ryzen 3000series or up. I think due to bios limitations from Lenovo.
Now here things get vague: In one way Lenovo sez the M725s’s are not upgradable to run win 11. Other hand Win 11 supports the AMD 2600 and the 2700.

Anyone got an M725s with a Ryzen 2600 or better running legit Win 11pro?

[CapLeaker]

Turns out this ol’ thing does run Win 11 pro just fine!

Cloned Win 10 pro HDD to SSD using an SSD to USB converter and using Clonezilla. Kicked the HDD out and installed the SSD. After a couple of reboots WIN 10 pro ran perfectly fine.

Then I downloaded the WIN 11 25H2.iso file and mounted it by double clicking on the .iso file.
Ran the powershell in admin mode and began went to the mounted iso file by going cd E:
Then ran ./setup.exe /Product server
This will bypass the nag about old hardware not supported bull sheet. I proceeded the install with a fresh install, delete all the old crap.

Win 11 pro installed perfectly with the license being already activated.

Depending on how you want to setup your account, you either log in with the Microsoft account or better yet in my case I installed it as a local account.

For that local account thing, press shift F10 when it asks you about the language settings. A command prompt pops up.
type:
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
after that type
shutdown /r /t 0
disconnect the LAN cable
Computer reboots. Finish the install as you would, just now you have e the option “I don’t have internet” click on that and off you go. After all is setup and running, plug in the LAN cable and it will take updates like nobody’s business.

Then DL “Wintoys” in the Microsoft store and get rid of all the bloat ware and connected crap.
I got a thin, squeaky clean Win 11 pro install, exactly what I needed for a couple of dumb projects I don’t want to buy new hardware for.

Done dinner! The Ryzen 2400G goes once more around the block!

[m1ch43lzm]

Just bypass the requirements, it's imposed by MS, same for 7th gen Intel Core (Kaby Lake 7xxx, but somehow the Kaby Lake refresh laptop 8xxx CPUs are "supported", and some exceptions like i7-7820HQ on an specific Surface model, and the HEDT models with an X at the end)
If you get a R5 2600, you also need a low-profile discrete GPU of course

As i have a desktop PC with a Ryzen 3 2200G and an MSI B450 motherboard running Win11 LTSC, that CPU was also "unsupported" for Win11 (Windows Update on Win10 told me so, but I updated the BIOS, swapped a 5700G and it was "supported" for upgrading to Win11)

The 2200G and 2400G are based on "Raven Ridge" (Zen1) architecture like their laptop counterparts, 2600 is "Pinnacle Ridge" (Zen+); There's also Ryzen 1000 series (Summit Ridge, Zen1), with the exception of the 1600AF which is a 2600 with slightly lower clock
For the 3000 series, you have "Matisse" (Zen2) without GPU and "Picasso" (Zen+) with integrated Vega GPU

but this mother board based on a 450 series does not support the Ryzen 3000series or up. I think due to bios limitations from Lenovo.

Yes, many OEMs didn't bother adding 3000 series CPU support to older boards, why should they? when they can sell a new PC with a "new" board that supports 3000 series CPU, same for going from 3000 series to 5000 series, different motherboard(or same motherboard but different BIOS) in OEM systems, you can't even use a 3000 series Ryzen in the board with 5000 series support
Or running a 2000 series Ryzen in a OEM motherboard that originally supports A-series AM4 and Ryzen 1000 series, same thing, it won't POST
Unless the newer model with 3000 series CPU uses almost the same board/same chipset with a different BIOS... maybe it can be done as an "experiment" (backup the BIOS with external programmer first, it's 1.8V SPI flash, make sure your programmer supports 1.8V or you'll fry the BIOS)
At least on retail motherboards (as in, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, Asrock, ... ) you can run a 5000 series CPU in an A320 motherboard if you wish, as long as the BIOS was updated (removing support for A-series of course)

Now here things get vague: In one way Lenovo sez the M725s’s are not upgradable to run win 11. Other hand Win 11 supports the AMD 2600 and the 2700.

Many OEMs don't bother supplying Win11 drivers for "older" PCs, even up to 10th gen Intel or Ryzen 3000 series, yet those are "supported" on Win11 by MS; AMD does supply proper Win11 drivers for the chipset and integrated GPU
Only for 11th gen Intel and Ryzen 4000 series they bother to supply Win11 drivers

[CapLeaker]

Just bypass the requirements, it's imposed by MS, same for 7th gen Intel Core (Kaby Lake 7xxx, but somehow the Kaby Lake refresh laptop 8xxx CPUs are "supported", and some exceptions like i7-7820HQ on an specific Surface model, and the HEDT models with an X at the end)
If you get a R5 2600, you also need a low-profile discrete GPU of course

As i have a desktop PC with a Ryzen 3 2200G and an MSI B450 motherboard running Win11 LTSC, that CPU was also "unsupported" for Win11 (Windows Update on Win10 told me so, but I updated the BIOS, swapped a 5700G and it was "supported" for upgrading to Win11)

The 2200G and 2400G are based on "Raven Ridge" (Zen1) architecture like their laptop counterparts, 2600 is "Pinnacle Ridge" (Zen+); There's also Ryzen 1000 series (Summit Ridge, Zen1), with the exception of the 1600AF which is a 2600 with slightly lower clock
For the 3000 series, you have "Matisse" (Zen2) without GPU and "Picasso" (Zen+) with integrated Vega GPU


Yes, many OEMs didn't bother adding 3000 series CPU support to older boards, why should they? when they can sell a new PC with a "new" board that supports 3000 series CPU, same for going from 3000 series to 5000 series, different motherboard(or same motherboard but different BIOS) in OEM systems, you can't even use a 3000 series Ryzen in the board with 5000 series support
Or running a 2000 series Ryzen in a OEM motherboard that originally supports A-series AM4 and Ryzen 1000 series, same thing, it won't POST
Unless the newer model with 3000 series CPU uses almost the same board/same chipset with a different BIOS... maybe it can be done as an "experiment" (backup the BIOS with external programmer first, it's 1.8V SPI flash, make sure your programmer supports 1.8V or you'll fry the BIOS)
At least on retail motherboards (as in, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, Asrock, ... ) you can run a 5000 series CPU in an A320 motherboard if you wish, as long as the BIOS was updated (removing support for A-series of course)


Many OEMs don't bother supplying Win11 drivers for "older" PCs, even up to 10th gen Intel or Ryzen 3000 series, yet those are "supported" on Win11 by MS; AMD does supply proper Win11 drivers for the chipset and integrated GPU
Only for 11th gen Intel and Ryzen 4000 series they bother to supply Win11 drivers

Usually I don’t mess with Win 11, but in the business world I have to.

Well this is the thing: The computer is a Lenovo and the motherboard is a Lenovo, so is the bios. While the B450 boards are upgradable, by other manufacturers like ASUS, MSI, Asrock whatever… Lenovo did not supply a bios update to support anything past the Ryzen 2000 series CPU’s. Official Lenovo sez the M725s isn’t supported by Win 11. But I am not that sure if there was a M725s with a Ryzen 2600 or 2700 available, those should be able to run Winn 11, unless the bios doesn’t support TPM 2.0 and I haven’t checked that yet.

Other than that, I am just taking a stack of Lenovo I5 7th generation out…

[m1ch43lzm]

Check the PSREF https://psref.lenovo.com/WDProduct/T...5_SFF?tab=spec
It was sold with Ryzen 5 PRO 2600 and Ryzen 7 PRO 2700, along with an NVIDIA GeForce GT730 for those versions
Slight difference between the PRO versions and "regular" Ryzen, only "extra" business oriented stuff that nobody cares, and disabled overclocking support (if using on a retail motherboard)
Here's one example https://psref.lenovo.com/Detail/Thin...F?M=10VT000ACA
Make sure the one you have also has a SSD, or add an NVMe SSD, Win11 is very slow on spinning rust HDD...
The embedded Win 10 Pro key should activate Win 11 Pro

It also has a discrete TPM 2.0 (the firmware fTPM is not used here), it's a business PC after all, it's mandatory to have TPM..., so no worries there
(They also sold it with A-series CPUs, haven't checked if the board is the same)

The chipset drivers from AMD should work fine, for the rest of the hardware the built-in/Windows update drivers should work, if not, install the Win 10 drivers, or find a model with Win11 drivers and download those (only for the missing devices)

Only have to deal with this https://www.servethehome.com/lenovo-...psb-the-video/
In short: if you stick a "new" CPU, it will lock itself (internal e-fuses) to work only on Lenovo boards, and won't post afterwards on retail motherboards, I don't know which gen started that BS, only remember hearing about it on Ryzen 4000 series onwards, when some of those CPUs were OEM only, and people tried those CPUs on retail boards
Make sure you get a CPU which posts on a retail motherboard if that's the case, and stick the R5 PRO 2400G on a retail A320/B350/X370/B450/X470 board to test if it's not PSB locked, then ebay those R5 2400G CPUs...

As a side note, i tested the 2200G on my MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk and it posted fine, even if not "officially" supported, at least that's the case on B550 if the BIOS supports 5000 series CPUs

[stj]

it's all bios bs.
i havea B350 motherboard with a Ryzen9 in it.
originally that wouldnt work till i changed the bios.

so, who makes the motherboard?
is it Foxcon?

[CapLeaker]

it's all bios bs.
i havea B350 motherboard with a Ryzen9 in it.
originally that wouldnt work till i changed the bios.

so, who makes the motherboard?
is it Foxcon?

Didn’t have any time to look at it further. Not sure if I can see any branding because it is a SFF and unless I disassemble most of the case, I can’t get the main board out. Even if I have to get a different cpu, I’d like to get this thing going for my kid instead of turfing it. Even if I have to flash the bios with my programmer in order for it to accept a supported CPU.

[m1ch43lzm]

As i said before, if you really want to run Win 11, just bypass the CPU requirements, download the Win11 ISO, create a USB stick using Rufus, it will offer you the option to bypass the CPU/TPM requirements, also create a local account and disable device encryption, the rest of the hardware should work fine, if you want to use it at home for your kid
Should have no issues with the TPM 2.0 as the motherboard has a discrete one, the 25H2 update may not be offered, through Windows Update; that's why I'm running LTSC 24H2 on the R3 2200G/B450 PC I have..., no "feature updates" to worry about, it gets the monthly security updates just fine

Or swap to a R5 2600/R7 2700 (check the cooling system first, it may not be enough for the R7), and add a low profile GPU (as neither the R5 2600 or R7 2700 have integrated GPU), maybe a low profile GT 1030 or GTX 1650, unless you want to go for a low profile RTX 3050, that will depend on the power supply on your unit

Searching for "Lenovo M725s motherboard", it's a weird one with propietary PSU connectors, and the front panel USB/audio connectors are built-in to the motherboard, it's labeled AM4P2MS

[CapLeaker]

As i said before, if you really want to run Win 11, just bypass the CPU requirements, download the Win11 ISO, create a USB stick using Rufus, it will offer you the option to bypass the CPU/TPM requirements, also create a local account and disable device encryption, the rest of the hardware should work fine, if you want to use it at home for your kid
Should have no issues with the TPM 2.0 as the motherboard has a discrete one, the 25H2 update may not be offered, through Windows Update; that's why I'm running LTSC 24H2 on the R3 2200G/B450 PC I have..., no "feature updates" to worry about, it gets the monthly security updates just fine

Or swap to a R5 2600/R7 2700 (check the cooling system first, it may not be enough for the R7), and add a low profile GPU (as neither the R5 2600 or R7 2700 have integrated GPU), maybe a low profile GT 1030 or GTX 1650, unless you want to go for a low profile RTX 3050, that will depend on the power supply on your unit

Searching for "Lenovo M725s motherboard", it's a weird one with propietary PSU connectors, and the front panel USB/audio connectors are built-in to the motherboard, it's labeled AM4P2MS

I don’t want to do the TPM bypass in this case, just wanna have that thing running as it supposed to be. I just don’t have any extra time to babysit another machine if something doesn’t go just right. Low profile cards the least of my worries, I got a few of these.
I had in mind more or less upgrading the CPU to whatever win 11 supports, throw another stick of RAM into it, upgrade the HDD to a SSD (because I have one) copy the Win 10 pro HDD content to the SSD, then upgrade to Win 11 pro.
Hand the damn thing over and Hope I don’t get it back to fix something on it.

[stj]

install Linux on it.
if you dont then your only going to be posting about win12 soon.

[m1ch43lzm]

I don’t want to do the TPM bypass in this case, just wanna have that thing running as it supposed to be. I just don’t have any extra time to babysit another machine if something doesn’t go just right. Low profile cards the least of my worries, I got a few of these.
I had in mind more or less upgrading the CPU to whatever win 11 supports, throw another stick of RAM into it, upgrade the HDD to a SSD (because I have one) copy the Win 10 pro HDD content to the SSD, then upgrade to Win 11 pro.
Hand the damn thing over and Hope I don’t get it back to fix something on it.

In that case
- Get a R5 2600 (or R5 PRO 2600), sell the 2400G on ebay
- Add a low profile GPU, as long as it supports UEFI and has proper Win 11 drivers you should be OK, anything better than an NVIDIA GT730 (as it's worse performance than the integrated Vega 11 on the R5 2400G), on AMD cards anything better than an RX550
- Add an NVMe SSD, more RAM, and keep the SATA HDD in there for extra storage
- No need to clone the existing HDD, best to do a clean install with the Win 11 ISO from MS, it will automatically detect the embedded Win 10 Pro key from the BIOS and activate
- Win 11 from 24H2 onwards will encrypt the SSD with BitLocker (even on a desktop PC, it used to do that only on devices that support Modern Standby such as laptops or tablets), the key will be stored on the MS account, and on the TPM (the TPM will supply the decryption key on every boot), backup the BitLocker key somewhere safe, if the key is lost, goodbye data

If you don't want the SSD to be encrypted, you have this option:

To disable Bitlocker encryption in Windows 11 setup, do the following.
When installing Windows 11, wait for the Region selection (OOBE).

On the Region and country screen, press Shift + F10.
A command prompt will open. There, type
reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BitLocker /v PreventDeviceEncryption /d 1 /t REG_DWORD /f,

and press Enter.

Now type exit, or simply close the command prompt.
Continue installing Windows 11 as usual. It won't encrypt your drive.

An alternative step, is to open regedit from the command prompt that appears when you press Shift+F10 and set the same key manually

Or after setup, search for "device encryption" or "bitlocker", it will take you to settings, where you can disable it, it will take a while to decrypt

Sometimes doing Win upgrades will cause issues down the road, especially with installed software on the previous version, or incompatible drivers carried over from the previous Win install

[CapLeaker]

install Linux on it.
if you dont then your only going to be posting about win12 soon.

That would be my preferred “go to” fix… unfortunately that Linux off ramp is not an option here, otherwise this thread wouldn’t exist.

[CapLeaker]

In that case
- Get a R5 2600 (or R5 PRO 2600), sell the 2400G on ebay
- Add a low profile GPU, as long as it supports UEFI and has proper Win 11 drivers you should be OK, anything better than an NVIDIA GT730 (as it's worse performance than the integrated Vega 11 on the R5 2400G), on AMD cards anything better than an RX550
- Add an NVMe SSD, more RAM, and keep the SATA HDD in there for extra storage
- No need to clone the existing HDD, best to do a clean install with the Win 11 ISO from MS, it will automatically detect the embedded Win 10 Pro key from the BIOS and activate
- Win 11 from 24H2 onwards will encrypt the SSD with BitLocker (even on a desktop PC, it used to do that only on devices that support Modern Standby such as laptops or tablets), the key will be stored on the MS account, and on the TPM (the TPM will supply the decryption key on every boot), backup the BitLocker key somewhere safe, if the key is lost, goodbye data

If you don't want the SSD to be encrypted, you have this option:

An alternative step, is to open regedit from the command prompt that appears when you press Shift+F10 and set the same key manually

Or after setup, search for "device encryption" or "bitlocker", it will take you to settings, where you can disable it, it will take a while to decrypt

Sometimes doing Win upgrades will cause issues down the road, especially with installed software on the previous version, or incompatible drivers carried over from the previous Win install

That’s what I was thinking on doing. However I don’t have a different 2000 series Ryzen and have to buy one. That’s why I ask if someone has that combo and is running a full win11 version on it as a proof of concept. Because officially Lenovo sez “No”.

[m1ch43lzm]

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...amd-processors
The R5 2600/R7 2700 and R5 PRO 2600/R7 PRO 2700 are in the list ✅
It was sold with that CPU ✅

And
https://www.amd.com/en/support/downl.../am4/b450.html
There's recent Windows 11 drivers for the B450 chipset ✅

The board has a discrete TPM 2.0 ✅, it won't use the firmware TPM from the CPU
UEFI and Secure boot support ✅

It should pass the MS requirements just fine

What Lenovo means by not supported, is "we won't provide windows 11 drivers because we don't want to", not "it's not supported by windows 11"
MS says otherwise

The 8th gen Intel version (M720s) has Win 11 drivers, go figure... Very likely they don't supply Win 11 drivers for the AMD version because it was also sold with the "Not supported" A-series and R3 2200G/R5 2400G, they don't want to "confuse" people...

The M75s also has Win 11 drivers, its the model with 3000 series Ryzen, different chipset (AMD PRO 560), no BIOS cross flashing possible...

[CapLeaker]

Turns out this ol’ thing does run Win 11 pro just fine!

Cloned Win 10 pro HDD to SSD using an SSD to USB converter and using Clonezilla. Kicked the HDD out and installed the SSD. After a couple of reboots WIN 10 pro ran perfectly fine.

Then I downloaded the WIN 11 25H2.iso file and mounted it by double clicking on the .iso file.
Ran the powershell in admin mode and began went to the mounted iso file by going cd E:
Then ran ./setup.exe /Product server
This will bypass the nag about old hardware not supported bull sheet. I proceeded the install with a fresh install, delete all the old crap.

Win 11 pro installed perfectly with the license being already activated.

Depending on how you want to setup your account, you either log in with the Microsoft account or better yet in my case I installed it as a local account.

For that local account thing, press shift F10 when it asks you about the language settings. A command prompt pops up.
type:
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
after that type
shutdown /r /t 0
disconnect the LAN cable
Computer reboots. Finish the install as you would, just now you have e the option “I don’t have internet” click on that and off you go. After all is setup and running, plug in the LAN cable and it will take updates like nobody’s business.

Then DL “Wintoys” in the Microsoft store and get rid of all the bloat ware and connected crap.
I got a thin, squeaky clean Win 11 pro install, exactly what I needed for a couple of dumb projects I don’t want to buy new hardware for.

Done dinner! The Ryzen 2400G goes once more around the block!