I don't know if this will help, but I have an ancient dell Inspiron 17R SE 7720 laptop which is running win 11 just fine. It originally had win 7 but was updated (free) to win 10 a year or so ago.
I used rufus to make the install USB stick and did an upgrade, not a clean install. All installed programs still work and no data was lost.
But first, I took the time to make a few preparations that might be helpful:
1) First, make backup images of your system drive and any other important data. This is always desirable before making major changes in case something goes wrong. Not from fear, but plain common sense.
2) I got rid of the ridiculous dell intel rst "raid" drivers and changed to normal AHCI. Very easy, but you have to first set windows to automatically boot to safe mode before you switch to AHCI in the bios (so windows can boot and download new drivers). Just run msconfig and look under the boot tab to do this. Revert to normal settings after you reboot and are using AHCI. Check that everything is working, then proceed.
2) Convert the system disk to GPT if it's currently the old MBR style. You can use the built in MBR2GPT program in windows. For me it didn't work when windows was running, so I ran it offline after booting to windows RE. (recovery environment). I converted all my other data drives too, but I think that's optional. Check that everything is working, then proceed.
3) In your bios settings (press F2 when booting), set the machine to boot in UEFI rather than legacy/bios mode. Check that everything is working, then proceed.
You should confirm everything is working after each step by booting into windows and making sure there are no problems or errors. Maybe run a few programs or look at a few pictures or use a browser, etc.
I think it will work for you, with only a small amount of patience and attention to detail.
