Windows Upgrade Help and more

Agreed. You could also try a clean install from a USB drive, as it sometimes bypasses the stricter upgrade checks. Another option is to check if a BIOS update enables the necessary security features, which might be the real culprit.

Hey there, totally feel your frustration. That i3-6100 is a solid chip, and it *does* seem arbitrary when it runs so well. You've hit the official hard wall: Microsoft requires 8th Gen Intel or newer for most CPUs, with a few 7th Gen exceptions. The TPM 2.0 was the first hurdle, but the CPU list is ...