Microsoft Surface Pro 11 - Upgrade to Windows 11 26H2

DMITRY LYSAK 20 Reputation points
2026-10-13T19:47:30.19+00:00

Hi,

I'm tired of waiting for the automatic update from 25H2 to 26H2 from Windows Update. I downloaded the 26H2 image and installed 26H2 manually (keeping user files). Everything went fine.

However...

  1. The installation took a very long time. More than an hour and a half. I've done similar installations on my other Intel X64 computers – it went much faster there. Just for reference – this shows how different the performance of Intel and ARM really is.
  2. Right after the manual update to 26H2, Windows Update, the MS Store, etc., started updating as well.

I wish you sucsess...

Surface | Surface Pro | Install and update
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Answer accepted by question author
Alexandr S 106.9K Reputation points Independent Advisor
2026-10-13T21:39:13.1733333+00:00

Hello, DMITRY LYSAK.

Thank you for sharing your experience. It is only worth noting that installing "on top" using an offline image and saving programs and files always takes a lot of time, since the OS needs to perform a huge number of its internal operations, as well as fixes (if there is damage), unlike a clean installation. And an hour and a half for this is quite a good (if I may say so) result. In most cases, the "roll over" takes 4-6 hours, and in particularly severe cases - up to 8 hours. This has been tested many times on different PCs and on Windows 10 and 11. So this is the usual "behavior" of the OS during such an update. It is also worth noting that the OS image on the download page is not updated very often (presumably once a day). And if during this time the updated components (for example, MicrosoftStore) did not manage to get into the image, then they will be updated after installing the OS itself. And this is also a normal situation. So everything is fine with you and there is no reason to worry.

P.S. The message was translated using an automatic translator, so I apologize for possible translation errors.

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