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

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Aug 9, 2021
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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

Win 11 Master
Moderator
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
 
Aug 9, 2021
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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

Win 11 Master
Moderator
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.
 
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Aug 28, 2021
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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.
 
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Aug 30, 2021
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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

Honorable
Oct 24, 2014
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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

Reputable
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Aug 8, 2019
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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.
 
Nov 6, 2021
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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!
 
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