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Why can't I upgrade to windows 10 or windows 11 my Dell Latitude E6420?

I found my old laptop from a decade back.

It had following spec

  1. i5 2nd Gen
  2. 2GB*2 (4GB Ram)
  3. 500GB HDD
  4. Windows 7 installed

I tried to upgrade it

  • 4GB*2 (8GB) and 500GB SSD as primary
  • removed the old DVD drive and replaced it with the existing 500GB HDD using a caddy.
  • cloned entire HDD to SSD (using dd) and then wiped HDD
  • Updated BIOS from A08 to A25

I thought this upgrade would make it more suitable to support windows 10/11.

Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0 and secure boot so that is out of the question

But Windows 10.

  • Created a bootable USB
  • Started installation wizard from boot by usb technique
  • Got error: no drivers available

I tried to solve it by using different port, and also tried using Intel Rapid storage technology thing. It still said no driver available.

What could be the reason? and also can I upgrade the processor too?

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  • It most likely has hardware (and so driver) incompatibilities that prevent it from running Windows 10. You said the machine was old, so it has probably gone as far as it can.
    – anon
    Commented Feb 6 at 12:25
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    Your processor doesn’t meet the system requirements for Windows 11 A 2nd Core i5 processor is more than a decade old. This question does not seem well researched
    – Ramhound
    Commented Feb 6 at 12:42
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    On a machine that old, you'd find Win 10 intolerably slow. Try a Linux distro, which you can test from USB without installation. On three old PC's which I maintain, I've switched from Windows 8 and 10 to Ubuntu, and noticed speed and reliability increased.
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented Feb 6 at 14:26
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    You wouldn't want to run Windows with 4GB of RAM even if the rest of the hardware was compatible (it's not), as the OS would be painfully slow, even with an SSD. The best performance will come from installing a Linux distro, and if you want one that's most Windows-like, try Ubuntu Desktop (you can run Windows programs on Linux by installing Wine)
    – JW0914
    Commented Feb 6 at 14:28

2 Answers 2

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Dell does not support Windows versions above 8 on your computer.

The site Support for Latitude E6420 | Drivers & Downloads | Dell US shows this message:

enter image description here

Installing Windows 10/11 on this computer will fail, because some required drivers for the hardware components will be missing. Even if you managed to force the install, the computer won't be fully functional.

Windows 8 drivers that are still available from the Dell website won't work for Windows 10/11.

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I have a Dell Latitude E6410 and I installed Windows 10 on it. I dont remember having any issues... Granted, it is a different model. I also used the Rufus "hack" to install Windows 11 and it worked perfectly fine. It might be worth a shot, if you want to run an unsupported OS.

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