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

Jul 10, 2021
3
0
10
This is so exciting - finally a way to create a W11 ISO.

In terms of booting from USB, the article says not to use a FAT32-formatted drive due to the 4GB file size limitation, or NTFS drives without having to switch off Secure Boot. And instead shows a workaround, using both file systems on one drive.

But what about exFAT drives, for example? Does using exFAT bypass both of those limitations at once? I'm still quite new to this, so am not sure how it works.
 

excalibur1814

Distinguished
Sep 12, 2009
200
61
18,670
Or, just enable Hyper-V on your machine and then install Windows 10 as a VM. then upgrade to Win 11 and test. Like I did. Very easy. No need to mess around with your machine.
 

mac_angel

Distinguished
Mar 12, 2008
560
80
19,060
I was just wondering, I don't know if this has been covered in any of the other articles, and most other articles were based on upgrading. But what's the install size of Windows 11, without upgrading?
Personally, I'm old school (other way of saying 'old as dirt'), and my favourite OS was Windows 2000 Server. It was basic, small, efficient, etc. I don't need all these pretty little windows and animations. I can install extra stuff if I want, but I'd prefer to just run something simple, basic, and run Steam, uPlay, Origin, etc.
 

slate0

Distinguished
Jun 5, 2013
16
1
18,515
Or, just enable Hyper-V on your machine and then install Windows 10 as a VM. then upgrade to Win 11 and test. Like I did. Very easy. No need to mess around with your machine.

To do that don't you need to connect your account to windows insider (if it isn't already?) Can you update to 11 from 10 without activating windows 11 on your account, registering your key, activating windows 10?
 

slate0

Distinguished
Jun 5, 2013
16
1
18,515
I was just wondering, I don't know if this has been covered in any of the other articles, and most other articles were based on upgrading. But what's the install size of Windows 11, without upgrading?
Personally, I'm old school (other way of saying 'old as dirt'), and my favourite OS was Windows 2000 Server. It was basic, small, efficient, etc. I don't need all these pretty little windows and animations. I can install extra stuff if I want, but I'd prefer to just run something simple, basic, and run Steam, uPlay, Origin, etc.

I did a fresh install in a VM, ran windows update. Space used is 38.6 GB. If you don't like animations, you won't like this. There are probably ways to turn them off.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mac_angel

coromonadalix

Distinguished
Nov 26, 2006
110
30
18,610
You can install it without internet connection, just do alt+f4 ... on the account screen

And there is a hack for bypassing the tpm protection and secure boot, for what i've seen they do some hack in the boot.wim and they use some windows 10 files for the hardware detection.
 
Jul 12, 2021
1
0
10
I have downloaded this 3 times and each time I have had errors so the iso would not work. I was able to upgrade but can't make an iso for fresh install
 

dragondagoth

Distinguished
May 4, 2009
6
0
18,510
I was just wondering, I don't know if this has been covered in any of the other articles, and most other articles were based on upgrading. But what's the install size of Windows 11, without upgrading?
Personally, I'm old school (other way of saying 'old as dirt'), and my favourite OS was Windows 2000 Server. It was basic, small, efficient, etc. I don't need all these pretty little windows and animations. I can install extra stuff if I want, but I'd prefer to just run something simple, basic, and run Steam, uPlay, Origin, etc.

You'll need 64 gigs of hard drive space.
 

astro-john

Reputable
Jun 23, 2017
8
0
4,510
Got it installed on a couple of virtual machines (VirtualBox and VMWare) but it still wants a product key. From what I see so far, no reason to upgrade from 10 to 11. Still have Win7 on one of my machines and it works just fine.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
I hope you all using spare machines, Win 11 dev builds are the newest version, doesn't make them the most stable. I didn't notice anything in article saying why not to install it on main PC. With LInus showing how to install it on almost anything now, I expect there is no point telling people not to install the new shiny.

An example of why you might not want to connect all your drives to it - https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/pc-partitions-became-raw.3713085/
 

Evolution2001

Distinguished
Oct 16, 2007
110
0
18,680
On a physical machine is not working. TPM and Secure Boot requirements aren't bypassed. Not yet.
Same here. Didn't work on an old Dell system with an i5. No TPM, No SecureBoot options in BIOS.

I have downloaded this 3 times and each time I have had errors so the iso would not work. I was able to upgrade but can't make an iso for fresh install
I had a similar issue the first time attempting it. The blue CMD prompt window where it starts compiling everything, I was getting errors. It would continue the script to the end, but I noticed that the final directory of files wasn't complete and the ISO wasn't as big as it should've been.
Interestingly, I ran the same thing on a different system and it completed all the compiling steps correctly. I don't know what was ultimately the difference. Maybe it was nothing except some general error on my first system/attempt.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
i got errors first 2 times I ran the uup file, it was only when I double clicked on the exe instead of right clicking it that it actually finished. So I have the ISO and was going to run in VM. But due to a blunder I am currently running win 11 on this PC so I don't need ISO.
 
Aug 8, 2021
1
0
10
I tried to install from the iso (english-version, only 4.05GB) as virtual machine in VirtualBox (latest) on a dynamic disk of 60GB w 8GB of RAM, but the installer says that my machine does not meet the requirements :-((
I also tried with a disk of 80GB static allocation. This gives the same result.
The installer does not tell me which of the requirements are not met.
Is it possible to enable secure boot and TPM on a VirtualBox-machine, or is it impossible to install Win11 as VM in VirtualBox?
 
Jul 10, 2021
3
0
10
karls0, Have you tried going to VirtualBox Settings -> System -> Enable EFI? Otherwise your VM will be trying to boot with BIOS.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
Comparing 10 to 11... right now, the difference isn't that big. The changes aren't that big that you constantly reminded you using a different version. Unless you spend all day looking in settings or start menu; Or haven't moved the start button to left hand side.

Hard to find differences that aren't skin deep. File Explorer is a work in progress, it lacks features that I assume will come back but its not better that 10 by any means.
 
Aug 9, 2021
4
0
10
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