How to reinstall Windows 11 Home on a Snapdragon X Elite device

article.adoc

How to reinstall Windows 11 Home on a Snapdragon X Elite device

Table of Contents

• What you’ll need
• Installation steps
  • 1. Create a WinPE boot device
  • 2. Create a Windows for ARM 11 24H2 (or newer) ISO file
  • 3. Retrieve the install.win file from a Windows on ARM installation ISO file
  • 4. Create the installation scripts
  • 5. Setup your device for installation

Note

As of June 2024, Snapdragon X Elite devices are still very new and support for installations of Windows on ARM by the consumers is not (yet) as straight forward as "burning" an ISO file supplied by Microsoft onto a USB drive like for their x86 counterparts. Currently, the only way to get a USB device to boot is to use an EFI partition created with diskpart or a WinPE boot drive.

What you’ll need

• A machine that is up and running - on Windows preferably but a Windows VM in macOS or linux is also fine.

• A USB hub with enough ports to plug all the devices below.

• 2x USB sticks (one for WinPE and one to store the installation files).

• A wired mouse or one using a USB dongle since the trackpad won’t be working during installation.

• An ethernet adapter to provide internet access to the machine and download the device drivers (including those for the wifi controller and the trackpad).

Installation steps

1. Create a WinPE boot device

From a Windows device,

1. Install Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK) and Windows PE add-on (official guide, as of June 2024)

2. Launch the "Deployment and Imaging Tools Environment" app with administrator privileges

3. Run the following commands one by one:

   cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\arm64"
   copype arm64 C:\WinPE_arm64
   Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:"en-us\winpe.wim" /index:1 /MountDir:"C:\WinPE_arm64\mount"
   MakeWinPEMedia /ISO C:\WinPE_arm64 C:\WinPE_arm64.iso
   Dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:"C:\WinPE_arm64\mount" /commit

The WinPE ISO should now be available at C:\WinPE_arm64.iso.

You can now simply use Rufus to "burn" the ISO file to a USB drive.

2. Create a Windows for ARM 11 24H2 (or newer) ISO file

Note	It appears that only recent versions of Windows on ARM 11 (24H2, as of June 2024), will allow the installation process to work. Make sure to keep that in mind when selecting the revision of Windows in the next steps.

There are many ways to achieve this outcome. If you have access to a macOS device, I’d suggest using the open source CrystalFetch app which will generate an ISO file from official ESD files downloaded from Microsoft servers. Otherwise, simply use a script from UUP dump to generate the ISO file.

3. Retrieve the install.win file from a Windows on ARM installation ISO file

1. Mount the ISO file and locate the install.wim file. For me, that file lived at /sources/install.wim. The file should be quite large (4+GB). If yours is nowhere near as large, you’re probably using the wrong WIM file.

2. Format the other USB drive (not the one used by WinPE) as NTFS.

3. Copy the install.wim file to that newly formatted drive. Anywhere will do but the root will make scripts listed next work out-of-the-box.

4. Create the installation scripts

Original code from Microsoft (1, 2). Those guide were written in 2014 and a couple tweak were necessary to make them work with Windows 11 in 2024.

1. Create a new file called CreatePartitions.txt next to the install.wim with the following content:

   rem == CreatePartitions-UEFI.txt ==
   rem == These commands are used with DiskPart to
   rem    create five partitions
   rem    for a UEFI/GPT-based PC.
   rem    Adjust the partition sizes to fill the drive
   rem    as necessary. ==
   
   select disk 0
   clean
   convert gpt
   
   rem == 1. Windows RE tools partition ===============
   create partition primary size=600
   format quick fs=ntfs label="Windows RE tools"
   assign letter="T"
   set id="de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac"
   gpt attributes=0x8000000000000001
   
   rem == 2. System partition =========================
   create partition efi size=260
   format quick fs=fat32 label="System"
   assign letter="S"
   
   rem == 3. Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition =======
   create partition msr size=128
   
   rem == 4. Windows partition ========================
   rem ==    a. Create the Windows partition ==========
   create partition primary
   rem ==    b. Create space for the recovery image ===
   shrink minimum=15000
   rem ==    c. Prepare the Windows partition =========
   format quick fs=ntfs label="Windows"
   assign letter="W"
   
   rem === 5. Recovery image partition ================
   create partition primary
   format quick fs=ntfs label="Recovery image"
   assign letter="R"
   set id="de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac"
   gpt attributes=0x8000000000000001
   
   list volume
   exit

2. Create a new file called ApplyImage.bat next to the install.wim with the following content:

   rem These commands copy the selected image file to
   rem predefined hard disk partitions on a UEFI-based computer.
   rem Usage:   ApplyImage WimFileName
   rem Example: ApplyImage E:\Images\ThinImage.wim
   
   rem === Copy the image to the recovery image partition =======================
   copy %1 R:\install.wim
   
   rem === Apply the image to the Windows partition =============================
   dism /Apply-Image /ImageFile:R:\install.wim /Index:1 /ApplyDir:W:\
   
   rem === Copy the Windows RE Tools to the Windows RE Tools partition ==========
   md T:\Recovery\WindowsRE
   copy W:\windows\system32\recovery\winre.wim T:\Recovery\WindowsRE\winre.wim
   
   rem === Copy boot files from the Windows partition to the System partition ===
   bcdboot W:\Windows /s S:
   
   rem === In the System partition, set the location of the WinRE tools =========
   W:\Windows\System32\reagentc /setreimage /path T:\Recovery\WindowsRE /target W:\Windows

5. Setup your device for installation

1. Make sure your Snapdragon X Elite computer is powered off.

2. Plug in all the USB drives, mouse and ethernet adapter to it.

3. Power on the machine and wait until the command prompt window on a plain blue background appears. This means that the WinPE environment has correctly started.

4. Identify the drive letter for the disk containing the install.wim, CreatePartitions.txt and ApplyImage.bat files. You can use the list volume command from diskpart to help here.

5. Run the following commands one at a time (replace D: with the drive letter found previously):

   diskpart /s D:\CreatePartitions.txt
   D:\ApplyImage.bat D:\install.wim

6. If all went successfully, you can power off the machine via shutdown /s

7. Once powered off, unplug all the USB drives (you can keep the mouse and ethernet adapter plugged in).

8. Start your machine, which should boot into the Windows installation flow by itself 🎉

@AdionC I've uploaded my WinPE ISO to this drive directory. Maybe give this one a try 🤷 It's only 342MB.

As for the recovery image, mine fitted within the 600MB set via create partition primary size=600. It's possible that yours included more locales than mine. Not sure tbh given that different UUP Dump script result in different ISO outputs.

I'm not sure how reagentc is even supposed to know which BCD store to update? On the original hard disk there are several entries for the recovery partition, but none are added to the new hard disk.

Not sure I follow here 🤔 By calling set id="de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac", reagentc will automatically know that T: contains the BCD store.

Good luck!

But T is the recovery partition, while the BCD store is on the system partition S.

For my case, luckily the hard drive that came with the computer could still be used through USB to boot into recovery, and from there I could follow the other steps.
Unfortunately while that did work to get a boot manager on the new drive, it still didn't boot windows.

Finally I tried the 24H2 preview release though, and that worked perfectly.
Since that fixed the boot, I wonder if directly using the 24H2 ISO would've booted too, but since I'm happy that the machine is finally booting I didn't try that yet.
Also, for other people with a Dell, you can get a full driver pack from https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-sg/000226163/dell-command
On an ARM machine (either windows or the recovery prompt) you can extract this from the command line, after which you can integrate this into the install.wim so that you don't have to worry about drivers during the setup.

Dism /Mount-image /imagefile:c:\win11install\install.wim /Index:1 /MountDir:c:\win11install\offline
Dism /Image:c:\win11install\offline /Add-Driver /Driver:c:\win11install\drivers\extracted /Recurse
Dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:c:\win11install\offline /Commit

Finally I tried the 24H2 preview release

I didn't mention it in this guide (since I didn't feel it would make a difference) but I did also use the 24H2 Preview ISO/WIM file. I'll edit the guide to make a note of it. Thanks for the extra details wrt drivers injection. Samsung doesn't provide any of that I'm afraid…

@AdionC how did you get your Dell Device to boot into a WinPE environment? No matter what ISO or method I use, my XPS 13 9345 doesn't boot into a WinPE environment. Did you have to set any custom BIOS settings or have to do anything in particular? What exactly did you do to get it to boot?

Not sure I remember the order correctly, since I tried various things after I broke booting the original windows, but I think like this:
-I put the original SSD in a USB enclosure, connected it to another computer
-I think you then need to use disk manager to assign a drive letter to the boot partition
-You can then use bcdedit to force the boot menu to be displayed
bcdedit /store x:/boot/bcd /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes
-Now when you connect it with usb to the xps, use F12 to show the disk selection, and select the usb to boot from, it should show the boot manager
-There should be some extra key listed there to go to Recovery instead of booting windows

@AdionC, I'm having an issue where when booting into the USB, it starts to load windows (spinning wheel animation starts) and then a second later it just shutdown and reboots

That's why you need to modify the bcd with bcdedit so you can get to the boot menu before windows tries to boot, and so that you can manually enter Recovery mode.

@AdionC entering the windows install's recovery mode isn't my problem. I already have the stock version of windows installed on this device, I am trying to completely re-install windows and need to boot into an external USB (WinPE in this case as thats what the instructions on this page say), but am having problems doing so.

Even when I get into the already installed windows recovery and select the USB drive to boot, it just starts the process of booting into the USB drive, then reboots itself back into the already installed Windows.

I had the same problem and was also not able to boot into WinPE, but you don't need that since you can enter the command prompt from the original drive's Recovery mode, and then follow the steps from there.
(Although I wouldn't suggest overwriting the original ssd, since then you are screwed if it goes wrong, so best to get another SSD for the new install, and use the original SSD in an USB enclosure to boot into recovery from)

@AdionC, that would be the same thing as just booting off of a USB, but I can't do that. Are you saying that the XPS will only boot of an SSD (even if connected via USB) but wont boot from a regular USB drive? Or will it only boot of an already installed version of windows?

I'm saying that I only managed to get it to boot from the original SSD. I don't think the type matters, just the way it's prepared.
Note that as I mentioned in an earlier comment, I only managed to actually reinstall windows by using 24H2 release candidate, so it might be that just downloading the 24H2 release candidate and making a bootable USB from that works to boot too, and doesn't require an additional boot medium, but I didn't try that yet since I got it working the long way.

@AdionC, Alright, I have a hunch that its either the original SSD hypothesis or its the fact that it can't boot from a Windows Installer image, and might have to boot from an already installed/imaged Windows (Like you did with the SSD). I've tried the 24H2 release candidate, and got it working on a Surface Pro 11 (Without the need of WinPE, it just boots fine from the 24H2 release candidate on its own), but it did not work at all on the XPS. Thanks for the help!

Ah alright, strange that 24H2 didn't work directly etiher then, since after installing it on the new SSD the way this guide describes, that new SSD also boots properly. (So the 24H2 image does contain a bootloader that works properly on the xps)

Thank you @caccialdo your solution completely worked for my case with Galaxy Book Edge 4! Great work. Not Samsung nor Microsoft support were able to help me otherwise! Great job mate!

So, having the same issue as @LarveyOfficial , I have a Dell XPS 13 Snapdragon, that came in today. Wanting to install a fresh copy of windows without any Dell software etc. So I found this guide, after having tried to boot a 24H2 Win11 ARM ISO from UUP, which did not do anything.
I can make the WinPE, use Rufus to 'burn' it to a external SSD, and then I have the same experience as @LarveyOfficial, where the boot starts, I see the spinner, for a second, and then it resets. It basically crashes I think.

Tried with the bcedit but that seems only for being able to boot in to the WinPE. I tried the (still existing) recovery and boot from there, but same issue.

Since the goal is also to install a fresh 2TB SSD, I will try the existing install approach, where I run these scripts from the real recovery, instead of WinPE and see if I can boot it. But yeah, that's something I only recommend if you have a backup of the original disk.

Still not useful though for people that have no recovery at all. But at least, we're getting somewhere.

Woei! Got some excellent progress. Probably also useful with the method here. I now tried installing directly using my already installed Windows. Used the scripts, and then moved the external SSD to the internal slot. Replacing the original one.
Then reboot: and.... same crash... :( After 1s.

So last resort, I just tried disabling stuff in the bios. And it worked!! So I guess the XPS has a component that causes the WinPE/Win setup to crash. I am now at the install window of Win11. I guess WinPE will also boot from USB this way.

Anyway, I disabled almost everything. I'll try to see if I can pinpoint which device/setting exactly. But there is hope for Dell users!

OK, I pinpointed it: it's the fingerprint reader. If you disable that, it will boot normally on the Dell XPS!

I have succesfully installed Win 11 now. I'll try to do it again without a installed Windows the coming days.
Also after all updates ran etc, I could re-enable fingerprint reader without issues.

Well, that escalated quickly.. I used UUP to download the latest canary Win 11 build for ARM (Windows 11 Insider Preview 26252.5000 (ge_prerelease) arm64), and with fingerprint disabled, I could just immediately boot it using F12. I 'burned' it using Rufus. So seems this whole workaround is no longer needed. I'll try again with a completely empty NVME, so it is not my current installation interfering.

So yeah, I wiped my NVME, put it back in the laptop, disabled the fingerprint reader, and booted instantly into the 26252 Win 11 install ISO on my USB SSD. Nice!

Nice investigative work @peterdk and glad to hear your laptop is working! My machine is a Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge which provide a very barebone BIOS unfortunately. I'd be very curious to know if the fingerprint reader was also the reason plain Win11 ISO files wouldn't boot

Thanks. So last update: I got it also working with the stable release Windows 11, version 24H2 (26100.1150) arm64. With disabled fingerprint and a completely wiped local NVME disk, it booted succesfully into the installer and is now installing. Booting setup took a bit longer, but it worked without issue after that. So, seems Microsoft has (almost) full support in the newest images. ( I did select include updates in the UUP dump website, maybe that also did something)

Only thing that I needed was to have a USB ethernet adapter, although with Rufus you can just enable local account and then you can just click through. Oh yeah, the mouse is not working, but the keyboard is, so I could just tab through everything.

Really happy with it! Thanks for the guide and the starting points. Next stop: Linux...!

Bonus: If you use UUP already to download and generate the ISO, you can easily add the Snapdragon Chipset drivers, WIFI/BT drivers and in case of the Dell, the fingerprint sensor driver, to the ISO. Then the setup process does not need anything external, like a mouse or so or disabling stuff in the bios. Very useful also, because these drivers are also set to your recovery, so if you have issues with your system, you don't have to disable the fingerprint sensor again, before being able to fix Bitlocker or so.

So how to do this?

• visit https://uupdump.net/
• Click 'Windows 11' dropdown
• Select 24H2 (currently the latest and greatest)
• Then pick most recent one, note that you need arm64 version, not amd64
  • In my case that's Windows 11, version 24H2 (26100.1150) arm64
• Select language and then Next
• Select the edition you need
• Select 'Download and convert to ISO`
• Enable Include Updates
• Click Create download package
  • This will download a zip file. Extract it somewhere with enough space (10GB+ or so)

Now the nice driver stuff.

• Create a directory Drivers in the extracted dir
  • Create 3 subdirectories in Drivers: ALL, WinPE and OS
• Go to your device's support page, in my case Dell XPS 13.
• Download Chipset, WIFI, GPU and in XPS 13 case, the Goodix Touch Sensor drivers. (And for example a touchpad driver if that is needed)
  • It's better to be conservative here, and only select above basic drivers. I for example got errors when starting setup when I just added all available drivers for my device.
• Run each downloaded exe, and choose extract. Extract all of them to a new dir.
  • If you have no Dell, just make sure you extract your drivers somehow so you have the dll and inf visible in a (sub) directory, besides other files that belong to it.
• Move all extracted drivers and their subdirectories to the Drivers\ALL directory you created.
• Then open ConvertConfig file with a text editor and add under [convert-UUP]:

AddDrivers   =1
Drv_Source   =Drivers

• Now you can run the uup_download_windows program, and it will build the ISO with the drivers included.
  • Make sure to check the output that it does run a step installing all drivers. It should show multiple lines with installing INF files.

Use Rufus to 'burn' resulting ISO to a USB drive, and you can then boot into it. You can now use the touchpad, WIFI works during setup and no need to disable fingerprint sensor for Dell XPS13!

This worked great! I was a noob and did not about using 24H2. If you have these symptoms:

• The winre.wim is too big and won't fit in the 600MB partition, leading to an error at the end of running the script
• Even if you expand the partition so it will fit, it still will not boot, just rebooting to the boot logo.

Thank you so much!

Bonus: If you use UUP already to download and generate the ISO, you can easily add the Snapdragon Chipset drivers, WIFI/BT drivers and in case of the Dell, the fingerprint sensor driver, to the ISO. Then the setup process does not need anything external, like a mouse or so or disabling stuff in the bios. Very useful also, because these drivers are also set to your recovery, so if you have issues with your system, you don't have to disable the fingerprint sensor again, before being able to fix Bitlocker or so.

So how to do this?

• visit https://uupdump.net/

• Click 'Windows 11' dropdown

• Select 24H2 (currently the latest and greatest)

• Then pick most recent one, note that you need arm64 version, not amd64

  • In my case that's Windows 11, version 24H2 (26100.1150) arm64

• Select language and then Next

• Select the edition you need

• Select 'Download and convert to ISO`

• Enable Include Updates

• Click Create download package

  • This will download a zip file. Extract it somewhere with enough space (10GB+ or so)

Now the nice driver stuff.

• Create a directory Drivers in the extracted dir

  • Create 3 subdirectories in Drivers: ALL, WinPE and OS

• Go to your device's support page, in my case Dell XPS 13.

• Download Chipset, WIFI, GPU and in XPS 13 case, the Goodix Touch Sensor drivers. (And for example a touchpad driver if that is needed)

  • It's better to be conservative here, and only select above basic drivers. I for example got errors when starting setup when I just added all available drivers for my device.

• Run each downloaded exe, and choose extract. Extract all of them to a new dir.

  • If you have no Dell, just make sure you extract your drivers somehow so you have the dll and inf visible in a (sub) directory, besides other files that belong to it.

• Move all extracted drivers and their subdirectories to the Drivers\ALL directory you created.

• Then open ConvertConfig file with a text editor and add under [convert-UUP]:

AddDrivers   =1
Drv_Source   =Drivers

• Now you can run the uup_download_windows program, and it will build the ISO with the drivers included.

  • Make sure to check the output that it does run a step installing all drivers. It should show multiple lines with installing INF files.

Use Rufus to 'burn' resulting ISO to a USB drive, and you can then boot into it. You can now use the touchpad, WIFI works during setup and no need to disable fingerprint sensor for Dell XPS13!

Amazing manual guy!

@peterdk I have same DELL XPS 13 Snapdragon. I am going to try to install the ISO created.

Just to know, is UUP dump a confiable site to download and build ISO images for Windows???

Regards

@wilotas I understand it just collects references to files hosted by Microsoft. So you download the actual data from Microsoft, not from this website. That's also the only reason why I would recommend them, otherwise malware issues are a possibility.

@wilotas I understand it just collects references to files hosted by Microsoft. So you download the actual data from Microsoft, not from this website. That's also the only reason why I would recommend them, otherwise malware issues are a possibility.

I wanna think so.

BTW what about XPS performance after installing this ISO?

I assume it's just the same? Haven't benchmarked it between those 2, since I needed a fresh install on a new NVME I installed. And I prefer a Windows without Dell added stuff. But since the drivers are official, I doubt Dell can do some magic outside that.

Amazing tutorial, where would autounattend.xml would go?

I tried the guide with my Galaxy Book 4 Edge 14' (of which the OS suddenly died and refused to boot)
Windows 11 Home 24H2 26100.1742_arm64 (using UUP dump, with updates included)
ADK 10.1.26100.1 (May 2024)

I didn't plug in the Ethernet during the installation (using PE), and used USB tethering with my phone after the boot into the newly installed Windows 11. Drivers and Samsung software(not all of them) were installed during the first boot, and I could get some more default Samsung services from Microsoft Store.

So far so good. Thank you for the guide!

I was in a hurry and I couldn't try burning W11 ISO directly using RUFUS. One thing I regret is not backing up the Samsung recovery partition, which might be able to be used later.

I tried the guide with my Galaxy Book 4 Edge 14' (of which the OS suddenly died and refused to boot) Windows 11 Home 24H2 26100.1742_arm64 (using UUP dump, with updates included) ADK 10.1.26100.1 (May 2024)

I didn't plug in the Ethernet during the installation (using PE), and used USB tethering with my phone after the boot into the newly installed Windows 11. Drivers and Samsung software(not all of them) were installed during the first boot, and I could get some more default Samsung services from Microsoft Store.

So far so good. Thank you for the guide!

I was in a hurry and I couldn't try burning W11 ISO directly using RUFUS. One thing I regret is not backing up the Samsung recovery partition, which might be able to be used later.

Hey, I made an Windows Image Splitter so you can make it work in FAT32, turns out the only issue is your boot drive not being formatted in FAT32. It's not perfect yet but it works. Maybe give it a shot if you plan on reinstalling? (Also, you can use Rufus optimization with this, telemetry question bypass etc)