News How to Clean Install Windows 11, No Product Key Required

[USAFRet]

I am very much a novice and

...and why are you trying to install Win 11, and on what hardware?

 

[whatsis3]

...and why are you trying to install Win 11, and on what hardware?

I am running Win 10 Home on HP Spectre x360 i7-1165G7, 16 GB RAM-4267, 1 TB SSD w/ Optane. I was trying to get the Win 11 ISO and create a bootable USB

 

[USAFRet]

I am running Win 10 Home on HP Spectre x360 i7-1165G7, 16 GB RAM-4267, 1 TB SSD w/ Optane. I was trying to get the Win 11 ISO and create a bootable USB

Unless you are trying to do this on a whole second test PC....leave Win 11 alone.
It is NOT finished yet...still a beta.

 

[whatsis3]

Unless you are trying to do this on a whole second test PC....leave Win 11 alone.
It is NOT finished yet...still a beta.

It is for a second test PC but I think I will take your advice and leave it alone until it's stable. Thank you for the advice and your time. Thank you for your service as well.

 

[Colif]

uup file took me 3 tries to get it right and then I didn't end up using it.

Wait for 11, it will be more impressive once its all released at once. You aren't really missing anything by not using it yet

 

[whatsis3]

uup file took me 3 tries to get it right and then I didn't end up using it.

Wait for 11, it will be more impressive once its all released at once. You aren't really missing anything by not using it yet

uup file took me 3 tries to get it right and then I didn't end up using it.

Wait for 11, it will be more impressive once its all released at once. You aren't really missing anything by not using it yet

I believe you're correct on that. Honestly, it was foolish of me to even start that process. I really don't know what I am doing. I was really just trying to learn by doing, more than anything. A beta version of a OS isn't a very smart place to be messing around. I just learned how to put a Linux distro in Virtualbox and I was thinking of trying it with 11 at the time. Glad ya'll talked me off the ledge. I am arriving very late to the tech party and it is all so incredibly fascinating to me and I got ahead of myself. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Colif]

Thats reason I was getting win 11, to set it up in a VM. I had just set up a win 10 VM, I have avoided Linux so far. have enough to learn with vm first. I just got side tracked by win 11 and I have to get back to VM again soon.

Running it in a VM is fairly safe way to look at it. Just getting it to work seems to be a problem.

Win 11 right now looks pretty much exactly same as 10, you have to look hard to notice any differences. Different start button? about it if you have start menu aligned to left.

 

[SMF88011]

Any suggestions on what to do now that I am stuck here? Been like this for about a hour.
Frozen at 14% during unmounting of image

 

[Marcella S.]

What a sad waste of time. All I get is that my folder is named incorrectly, no matter where it is or how simple the name is (no spaces). As I said, a real time-waster, Mr. Piltch.

 

[BgeeOz]

I am very much a novice and trying to learn and follow all this step by step. I was able to get to the point of double clicking "uup_download_windows.cmd" and instead of a getting a blue command prompt window, mine is black and I notice mine doesn't say administrator at the top. I also did a right click and run as admin the with same black command prompt window. I get a message inside the command prompt window that says the following:

"Current directory contains spaces in its path.
Please move or rename the directory to one not containing spaces.
Press any key to continue . . ."

I followed the directions exactly as stated. Any suggestions on how to proceed or where I went wrong?

Thank you

Had same problem. The instructions said to create a new folder and move downloaded files to it. Rename that folder with no spaces in the name. I used "win11iso".

"never give up, never surrender". Creating VM is a great learning experience. Keep going.

 

[adelio]

When will Microsoft figure out that i do NOT want a Microsoft account, I have never wanted one, and would never use it and I see no benefit to me.

 

[escksu]

I can tell you there is no real need for any of these now. Because once its launched on October 5th, we will get the official launch ISO. So, just wait a while.

 

[excalibur1814]

Or... wait a few days and you'll hopefully be able to download a full release iso.

 

[gregorio2]

Wait is over, ISO here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11

 

[logainofhades]

When will Microsoft figure out that i do NOT want a Microsoft account, I have never wanted one, and would never use it and I see no benefit to me.

It is useful to have, so you can tie your product key to your account. It makes transferring to a new motherboard, or all new system, much easier.

 

[DannyBones]

As of Nov 6 2021, there seems to be some minor differences for the third method, “Download a Windows 11 ISO That Bypasses TPM”. For anyone like me whose maybe not quite as nerdy as the regular reader of Tom’s Hardware (no offense), I thought I’d spell out exactly what I found I had to do to get it to work.
The main page in their link now forwards to their “new home”: https://github.com/AveYo/MediaCreationTool.bat
Tom’s instrux say to download the MediaCreationTool.zip, then “You need to click the "View raw" link under the zip file.” But I didn’t find the Zip file, just a list of files in the Zip. Click on MediaCreationTool.Bat, it should give you a window that contains the (currently) 1339 lines of the .bat file you need. I found I had to use the mouse to select all 1339 lines. Select them and copy it to the clipboard. Then open Notepad (hit the Windows key on your keyboard, and type in Notepad). Paste in the .bat code. Save it somewhere on your hard drive, but change “Save as type” from “Text Documents .txt” to “All Files (.*), and name it what you want, but with the extension .bat at the end. Then navigate to the file you just saved and open it. The menus are a little different from what’s on Tom’s instructions, but it’s not all that different. The process should be completely automatic from that point on. Who knows if they may have changed it even more by the time you read this, but hopefully it helps!

 

[USAFRet]

As of Nov 6 2021

This was written in July 2021, long before Win 11 install was finalized.
Not surprising that things changed.

 

[frano356]

I need some help. I don't understand step 5.
I am not a complete novice. I've been using Rufus for years now, but I seem to have a problem with a specific computer. lemovo 14 81mq

this computer seems to not read NTFS (unsire) however I've tried several different windows 10 and 11 bootable using rufus, The only one that boot was a windows 10 copy and that windows 10 used the MBR and fat 32 partition automatically in rufus.

all the other windows 10s and 11 used the GPT NTFS and they don't boot the windows loading sign just spins until it goes to a blue screen

The device originally had windows 11 however because its one of those EMMC2 machines with only 64gb storage I assume the computer needed more free space in order to clean install from within the current windows 11 so I tried to do a clean install from bootable rufus USB

Im not quite following step 5 to create a second partition as it coms in the middle of rufus doing its thing. should I create a second partition after rufu finishes or during? as again step 5 comes before even selection the addition stuff like bypas TPM and create local account . so I'm a bit lost, any help would be appreciated

does anything need to be on this second partition? also, step 5 says to create an NTFS partition, shouldn't I be creating a fat 32 partition instead of another NTFS partiton? again a little confused.

 

[USAFRet]

I need some help. I don't understand step 5.
I am not a complete novice. I've been using Rufus for years now, but I seem to have a problem with a specific computer. lemovo 14 81mq

this computer seems to not read NTFS (unsire) however I've tried several different windows 10 and 11 bootable using rufus, The only one that boot was a windows 10 copy and that windows 10 used the MBR and fat 32 partition automatically in rufus.

all the other windows 10s and 11 used the GPT NTFS and they don't boot the windows loading sign just spins until it goes to a blue screen

The device originally had windows 11 however because its one of those EMMC2 machines with only 64gb storage I assume the computer needed more free space in order to clean install from within the current windows 11 so I tried to do a clean install from bootable rufus USB

Im not quite following step 5 to create a second partition as it coms in the middle of rufus doing its thing. should I create a second partition after rufu finishes or during? as again step 5 comes before even selection the addition stuff like bypas TPM and create local account . so I'm a bit lost, any help would be appreciated

does anything need to be on this second partition? also, step 5 says to create an NTFS partition, shouldn't I be creating a fat 32 partition instead of another NTFS partiton? again a little confused.

This is a 4 year old article.
Things have changed.

Please start a NEW thread for your particular situation.