Installing Windows 11 on any device using DISM

windowsinstallusingdism.md

Install Windows 11 on unsupported devices

Guide to install Windows 11 on any PC (does not involve ISO modifications) This guide will take you through a clean and simple way to install Windows 11 on your device by bypassing all requirements without doing any ISO modifications. Note: Guide shows fresh installation only.

Requirements:

1. ISO file (Link 1) (Link 2) (22000.65)
2. Rufus Microsoft Store GitHub Website
3. USB drive [8GB or more]

Installation

Step 1: Use Rufus to flash your USB drive with the ISO.

• Make sure that in Rufus, partition scheme is set to GPT. Everything else can be left on the default selection.

Step 2: Boot the USB drive (skip this part if you already know how to do it)

• Reboot your PC to firmware (Settings -> Update & Security -> Recovery -> Advanced startup)
• When Windows Recovery is loaded, look around for the option "UEFI Firmware" and go to that. This will restart your device to its BIOS settings.
• Look for "Boot" section (case on most firmwares) and boot to your USB drive.

Step 3: Booting to the pre-installation environment and manually setting up partitions

• Press Shift + F10 to open up Command Prompt.
• Use diskpart to open up Microsoft DiskPart (needed for partitioning).
• Use list disk to list disks online on your device. Choose the disk you'll install Windows on. For the entirety of this tutorial, I will assume its disk 0. Important note: The disk must be GPT. To determine this, look for the contents of the Gpt column that is shown when list disk is used. If it contains an asterisk, the disk supports GPT. If you don't see an asterisk, you need to convert your disk from MBR (current) to GPT. To do so, select the disk using select disk 0 and use conv gpt. This shall convert your disk to GPT.
• Use select disk 0 to select disk 0 for operations.
• Use list partition to list all partitions in the current disk (we will assume disk has no partitions, hence create from scratch)
• Use create partition efi size=500 to create an EFI partition of 500MB.
• Use format fs=fat32 quick to quick format the EFI partition with FAT32 filesystem.
• Use assign letter a to assign your EFI partition A:.
• Use create partition primary to create your primary OS partition, which will use the rest of the available disk space.
• Use format quick to format the partition.
• Use assign letter c to assign your OS partition C:.
  To sum it all up,
  Main OS partition is assigned C:
  EFI/Boot partition is assigned A:
  USB drive is assigned X:
  (varies)

Step 4: Query the USB drive for Windows OS editions present

• Use dism /Get-ImageInfo /ImageFile:X:\sources\install.wim to query the USB drive.
  We are going to install Windows 11 Pro, which is Index: 6 in my case.

Step 5: Deploying the images onto disk (OS installation)

• Use dism /Apply-Image /ImageFile:X:\sources\install.wim /Index:6 /ApplyDir:C: to copy the OS files.
• Use bcdboot C:\Windows /s A: /f ALL to copy the boot files.

Step 6: Reboot your PC

Go ahead, close all active Windows and reboot your PC.
Sees Windows 11 boot logo

Credits

Albacore on Twitter for the ISO file.
Gursewak for CheemsMirror.
The rest of the Internet.
 

BTW, did you check out CleanWin yet?

dism /Get-ImageInfo /ImageFile:X:\sources\install.wim

You may have to use /ImageFile:D:\sources\install.wim instead, although this may be because I'm installing this in a VM.

@bolshoytoster Hi, yes - as mentioned in a previous point, this varies:

Do let me know if you have any other queries.