updating alienware aurora r6 to windows 11

 This is what Grok said -- copy pasting

The Alienware Aurora R6, released in 2016, is not officially supported for an upgrade to Windows 11 through Microsoft's standard Windows Update process due to its 7th-generation Intel processor (e.g., i7-7700K), which falls below Microsoft's minimum requirement of 8th-generation Intel CPUs for Windows 11 compatibility. However, it is still possible to install Windows 11 on this system with a clean installation, bypassing Microsoft's restrictions, as many users have successfully done so. Here’s how you can approach updating your Alienware Aurora R6 to Windows 11 based on available information and practical steps:

Key Considerations

1. Hardware Requirements Check:
   • CPU: The Aurora R6 typically ships with a 7th-gen Intel processor (Kaby Lake), such as the i7-7700K. While this doesn’t meet Microsoft’s official requirements, Windows 11 can still run on it.
   • TPM 2.0: The Aurora R6 motherboard (Intel Z270 chipset) supports TPM 2.0, which is a requirement for Windows 11. You’ll need to enable it in the BIOS if it’s not already active.
   • Secure Boot: This is also required and supported by the Aurora R6’s UEFI BIOS.
   • RAM: The system supports up to 64 GB DDR4, and you’ll need at least 4 GB (8 GB or more recommended).
   • Storage: At least 64 GB free space is required; the Aurora R6’s NVMe SSD or SATA drives should suffice.
2. Official Support: Dell does not list the Aurora R6 as a supported device for Windows 11 upgrades, meaning you won’t get official driver updates from Dell for Windows 11. However, most drivers can be sourced from Microsoft’s Windows Update or third-party vendors (e.g., NVIDIA for GPUs).
3. Risks: Installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware means Microsoft may not provide updates in the future, though as of March 11, 2025, users report continued functionality with manual installs.

Steps to Update to Windows 11

Here’s a step-by-step guide to perform a clean installation of Windows 11 on your Aurora R6:

1. Backup Your Data

• Before proceeding, back up all important files to an external drive or cloud storage. A clean install will wipe your existing Windows 10 installation.

2. Check and Enable TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot

• Restart your Aurora R6 and enter the BIOS (press F2 repeatedly during boot).
• Navigate to the Security or Boot section.
• Look for TPM (Trusted Platform Module) or PTT (Platform Trust Technology, Intel’s TPM equivalent). Enable it if it’s disabled. It may appear as "Firmware TPM" or "PTT Security."
• Ensure Secure Boot is enabled under the Boot options.
• Save changes (usually F10) and reboot.

3. Create Windows 11 Installation Media

• Download the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft’s official website (use the "Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO)" option).
• Use a tool like Rufus to create a bootable USB drive:
  • Insert a USB drive (at least 8 GB).
  • Open Rufus, select the Windows 11 ISO, and choose your USB drive.
  • To bypass the CPU/TPM check, in Rufus, set "Image Option" to "Extended Windows 11 Installation (no TPM/no Secure Boot)" if needed, though this shouldn’t be necessary if TPM and Secure Boot are enabled.
  • Click "Start" to create the bootable drive.

4. Install Windows 11

• Insert the USB drive into your Aurora R6.
• Restart and enter the Boot Menu (press F12 during boot).
• Select the USB drive to boot from it.
• Follow the Windows 11 installer prompts:
  • Choose "Custom: Install Windows only (advanced)."
  • Delete existing partitions on your primary drive (after backing up!) and install Windows 11 to the unallocated space.
• The installer should detect the embedded Windows 10 key in your BIOS and activate Windows 11 automatically after installation.

5. Post-Installation Setup

• After the first-time setup, connect to the internet.
• Go to Settings > Windows Update to download the latest updates and drivers. Most hardware (e.g., Intel chipset, NVIDIA GPU) should be recognized automatically.
• Install specific Dell software:
  • Alienware Command Center: Download version 4.8.23.0 (or later) from Dell’s support site for the Aurora R6.
  • ASMedia USB 3.1 Controller Driver: If Device Manager shows an unknown device, download Chipset_Driver_P66PG_WN32_1.16.42.1_A02.EXE from Dell’s site.
• For your GPU (e.g., GTX 1070), download the latest driver from NVIDIA’s website.

Performance and Stability

Users report that the Aurora R6 runs Windows 11 well for gaming, software development, and general use after a clean install. The i7-7700K, while older, has sufficient power (4 cores, 8 threads) for most tasks, and the system’s liquid cooling and 850W PSU support robust performance. Avoid installing unnecessary old Dell drivers to keep the system lean.

Caveats

• No In-Place Upgrade: Due to the 7th-gen CPU, you can’t upgrade directly from Windows 10 via Windows Update; a clean install is required.
• Future Updates: Microsoft may eventually block updates on unsupported CPUs, though this hasn’t been enforced as of now.
• Revert Option: Keep your Windows 10 installation media handy in case you need to roll back.

If you’re comfortable with a clean install and managing drivers manually, updating your Aurora R6 to Windows 11 is feasible and can breathe new life into your system as of March 11, 2025. Let me know if you need help with any specific step!

#Windows #WindowsUpdate #Windows11 #Alienware #AuroraR6 #AlienwareAuroraR6 #7th-GenIntel

Some X posts on this topic

https://x.com/AnneBarschall/status/1899475503959937228

https://x.com/AnneBarschall/status/1899474619087700153

Curiously, X won't let me embed them yet

Wanting to save a post from FB 250309

 

text of post

Transcript below of an incredibly powerful and deadly accurate speech in the French Senate two days ago by Mr. Claude Malhuret. This may some day take its rightful place alongside the best of Sir Winston Churchill and President John F Kennedy. 

Brace yourself:

“President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, My dear colleagues,

Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.

Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.

This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.

I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.

Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.

Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign.

Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.

And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.

The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.

What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.

This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada, you are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, he is Taiwan and the China Sea.

At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called “diplomatic realism.”

So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated.

Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.

The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.

Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that it holds, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation.

This will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to circumvent Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of only the willing countries, with of course the United Kingdom.

Second, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.

Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we must build the neglected European defence, to the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.

Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is to recognize that France has been right for decades in arguing for strategic autonomy.

It remains to be built. It will be necessary to invest massively, to strengthen the European Defence Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, to harmonize weapons and munitions systems, to accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine, which is today the leading European army, to rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, to relaunch the anti-missile shield and satellite programs.

The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And much more will be needed.

Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be implemented. For good.

But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.

We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left.

They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defence.

They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin.

Peace for the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years.

Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react.

Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.

The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.

But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.

The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.

Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost.

The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.

Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.”

-Claude Malhuret speaking to the French Senate Tuesday March 4 2025. You have just read the transcript of a speech that will live forever in the history books

Humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

 Here is my Facebook post about this.  Maybe I'll write more later

Wanting to save a post from X

 I should say that the caption on the illustration of this post contains a word that I normally don't say -- and would prefer not to include, but the rest of the post is well worded.

Thoughts from the US

"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long… pic.twitter.com/2whmo3oJfR

— dave lawrence 🐟🐟🐠 (@dave43law) March 3, 2025

 "In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

"These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.

"And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.

"The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.

"Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.

Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now."

- Charles Pierce

Mystic Tycoon

 My sister-in-law found this clip of me acting.  It's a trailer for an audio podcast series called "Mystic Tycoon"  It was originally called "Secret Trillionaire."

Director: Amy Omar

Producer: Adam Kinyon

Production Company: Best Dressed Films https://www.bestdressedfilms.com/

I am embedding this video from FB.  I am trying to get permission to post it on my YouTube channel.   I can provide excerpts to you privately, if necessary.  

I haven't embedded from FB before.  I think this works.  I hope it continues to work.  The clip shows me acting as the evil Lisa in this series.

Looking at this ad, it appears that the video clip that we filmed was a teaser for an audio series on Pocket FM.  I personally haven't recorded any audio for that series, so I don't know much about it, other than what is filmed here.   

#MysticTycoon #mystictycoon #PocketFM

*****

Another, shorter excerpt on FB

I'm not in this one, but it's another video from the same source