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Microsoft Releases Windows 11 ISOs for Arm64-based PCs (windowscentral.com) 44

Posted by msmash from the about-time dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: After dragging its feet for years, Microsoft has finally released the first official Windows 11 ISOs for PCs with an Arm64 processor. This means users can now clean install Windows 11 using official offline media on an Arm64-based PC, including the latest Snapdragon X Copilot+ PCs.

The ISOs contain version 24H2 can be downloaded from the official Microsoft website, and are around 5GB in size depending on the language you select. According to the company, the ISOs are primarily designed for running Windows 11 in a virtual machine on Arm64 PCs. However, it also mentions that you can use them to clean install Windows 11 directly onto Arm64 hardware too.Unfortunately, depending on the Arm64 PC you have, you may need to do some additional work to get the ISO bootable.
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Microsoft Releases Windows 11 ISOs for Arm64-based PCs More

Microsoft Releases Windows 11 ISOs for Arm64-based PCs

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  • That would be hard "no" but thanks anyway.

    • I wouldn't run it on any metal, but TFS suggests that's not even Microsoft's plan for it.

      I probably will try installing it in qemu, to see if it works there. Just as a laugh. I have Windows 11 for amd64 installed there with an emulated TPM and secure boot.

    • I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of Arm64 devices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced

  • It would seem that the Intel slide from being the apex predator in the silicon world is going on apace,

    I'm so old I can remember when there was Windows/NT for the PowerPC. Intel crushed that little project back then just through sheer dominance, but I don't think they can do anything like that today.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Dadoo ( 899435 )

      I'm so old I can remember when there was Windows/NT for the PowerPC

      And DEC's Alpha

      When they released Windows for the Alpha, everyone at my old job was like "Woo hoo! No more Unix!", and we started porting our software to Windows. Then we started doing benchmarks.

      That was the last time anyone mentioned Windows on our servers.

      • everyone at my old job was like "Woo hoo! No more Unix!", and we started porting our software to Windows. Then we started doing benchmarks.

        That was the last time anyone mentioned Windows on our servers.

        Amazing that presumably smart people would be happy about leaving Unix for Windows.

        Then again, Charles Manson got married in prison, some woman thought that was a good idea.

      • Re:So goes the Win-tel monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)

        by slaker ( 53818 ) on Thursday November 14, 2024 @04:08PM (#64946279)

        In the mid 90s, I was dealing with process control systems that ran on NT/Alpha and PPC because x86 systems weren't thought to be able to handle the IO loads. We also offered the same product on Solaris.

        I will say that it was cool to see an Alpha chew on an x86 binary for a minute and then watch as FX32 kicked in and whatever-it-was would run faster on the workstation than the best PC in the building. It wasn't really surprising, except that in a lot of cases the PHBs would look at the DEC systems and say something like "I thought you said those things can't run Excel."

        On the other hand, our system worked so much better on UltraSparcs than it did NT4 that it was actually funny that we gave customers the option to use anything else.

      • Yeah, it was entertaining, but not particularly useful. Also besides Alpha and PPC there was also a MIPS version, IIRC.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      It would seem that the Intel slide from being the apex predator in the silicon world is going on apace,

      I'm so old I can remember when there was Windows/NT for the PowerPC. Intel crushed that little project back then just through sheer dominance, but I don't think they can do anything like that today.

      Last I checked, Intel's problems aren't related to Windows. After all, AMD processors run Windows just fine.

      As for PowerPC, the problem wasn't Intel, it was Microsoft. Windows NT on PowerPC only worked on CHRP p

      • It would seem that the Intel slide from being the apex predator in the silicon world is going on apace,

        I'm so old I can remember when there was Windows/NT for the PowerPC. Intel crushed that little project back then just through sheer dominance, but I don't think they can do anything like that today.

        Last I checked, Intel's problems aren't related to Windows. After all, AMD processors run Windows just fine.

        As for PowerPC, the problem wasn't Intel, it was Microsoft. Windows NT on PowerPC only worked on CHRP platforms - they never worked on the largest PowerPC platform out there - Apple's Macs. You couldn't (until VERY recently) run Windows NT on a Mac - no drivers, no support for the Mac platform.

        Thus, Windows NT only ran on a very tiny subset of PowerPC machines out there. It's so bad, there's no Service Pack 6 for NT4.

        Now you can run Windows NT on PowerPC on a Mac, but it's highly unstable and you need to boot from the CD so you can boot NT.

        Not even on a PowerMac 6100? I thought it was a CHRP Design.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      My take is Intel is done for. They may collapse completely, sell off some unites or eke out a continued existence as a small specialist hardware maker. But that is it.

  • Is there a single ARM64 computer with an optical drive out there? Do they expect people to use a USB optical drive to install Windows?

    • Is there a single ARM64 computer with an optical drive out there? Do they expect people to use a USB optical drive to install Windows?

      External drive. I can finally migrate from the developer version running on Parallels. Unfortunately, my licensed copy serial number may not let me install it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GrahamJ ( 241784 )

        I was thinking the same, and then I remembered I haven't started it up in months. Maybe not that high a priority.

    • Is there a single ARM64 computer with an optical drive out there? Do they expect people to use a USB optical drive to install Windows?

      The probably are expecting thumbdrive installs.

      • of course, but then is an iso9660 file the proper format to distribute something to install on an USB thumb drive? I understand it can be extracted to the thumb drive... but at this point it could be just a ZIP file or some other archive format.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by darkain ( 749283 )

      My 16-core ARM Server has normal SATA ports. I can just as easily add optical drive to it as easily as an X86 machine. It also has normal PCIe slots that I use for 10gbe networking and normal Radeon graphics cards. ARM64 isn't that far off from a normal traditional X86 desktop.

      Also, ISO images are NOT just for optical drives, they've been the default images used on USB flash drives for well over a decade now. Additionally, there are CD emulators out there too, especially in the virtual machine space, that d

      • My 16-core ARM Server has normal SATA ports. I can just as easily add optical drive to it as easily as an X86 machine.

        You could. But will you? And will you install Windows 11 on it? If so, congratulations, you must be part of that dozen or so people worldwide who did it!

    • An ISO as a name has evolved from what it used to be. The format originally came from optical disks but today it is as applicable to CDs and DVDs as it is to SD cards, and USB sticks.

      No one is expecting anyone to use a USB optical drive to install windows. In fact the *only* thing mentioned in the instructions at all is the size of the USB stick you need (>8GB) along with a recommendation that you use a blank USB stick since using the Media Creation Tool for Windows installs will erase the stick.

      • An ISO as a name has evolved from what it used to be. The format originally came from optical disks but today it is as applicable to CDs and DVDs as it is to SD cards, and USB sticks.

        In this context, ISO means ISO9660, which is a filesystem used by optical disks. I've never heard of anyone formatting a USB thumb drive or SD card using that read-only file system.
        I understand they ship a "media creation tool" which extract the IS9660 file to a USB thumb drive formatted using FAT or NTFS or whatever regular filesystem they use.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by KlomDark ( 6370 )
      Keep thinking, you're almost there. Now think about what requirements there are for using optical media. Oh, no requirements? You've thought yourself into a corner. Keep thinking, you'll get there soon.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by batkiwi ( 137781 )

      Almost every OS out there distributes installers as an ISO, not just windows. Pretty much every Linux does as well.

      The idea is you typically load it to a thumb drive 99% of the time if a physical VM, and 100% of the time if virtual.

    • ipmi's use ISO's!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      That is really not a problem these days anymore. You can boot ISOs from USB of any kind with most BIOSes.

    • I and my colleagues regularly install Windows (I know, my bad) on computers without optical drives, using the ISO from MS. You know, you can make a bootable USB drive using the ISO, at least on x86.

    • Just copy the files within the ISO to any USB drive. Any UEFI firmware should be able to boot to it so long as it supports the FS on the disk and ISA appropriate EFI bootloader exists.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Boot from flash drives!

  • Now with 50 percent more spyware, Enjoy Windows Recall!
    • I'm honestly amazed they can still sell anything at all. Then again, I'm a *nix bigot to the bone and my lack of understanding is probably the same reason some folks have been declaring the year of the Linux Desktop since 1994.

      Of course, being a bigot, I will laugh and snort at someone for using the GUI rather than learning the CLI anyway. The GUI will always make folks weak. GUI use is like being a bodybuilder and getting excited about machine weights. Anything, worth doing is worth doing with a text int

      • I'm honestly amazed they can still sell anything at all. Then again, I'm a *nix bigot to the bone and my lack of understanding is probably the same reason some folks have been declaring the year of the Linux Desktop since 1994.

        Of course, being a bigot, I will laugh and snort at someone for using the GUI rather than learning the CLI anyway. The GUI will always make folks weak. GUI use is like being a bodybuilder and getting excited about machine weights. Anything, worth doing is worth doing with a text interface :-P

        I use MacOS and Linux when possible. I am always a little surprised when people try to claim their technical chops via Windows, and claim that Mac users are all stupid people.

        Using MacOS, I dig into terminal just about every day, and yes, it is a whole different world, and It isn't too hard to become a *nix bigot.

      • I think that is just a silly argument. You might as well argue that nobody should use rules to differentiate equations and instead do it from first principles every time. A GUI can be thought of elevating the level of abstraction for many tasks allowing one to ignore unnecessary details, just like a biologist can explain behaviors and work with models without having to invoke particle physics, for example. With apologies to Newton, it's just another example of standing on the shoulders of giants. As deve

        • I think that is just a silly argument. You might as well argue that nobody should use rules to differentiate equations and instead do it from first principles every time. A GUI can be thought of elevating the level of abstraction for many tasks allowing one to ignore unnecessary details, just like a biologist can explain behaviors and work with models without having to invoke particle physics, for example. With apologies to Newton, it's just another example of standing on the shoulders of giants.

          Let's take something like this from a real world example. I might have 10 thousand files to rename. So I can do a few things. I can buy software to rename them, I can roll my own renaming application with a GUI, or I can just go in and start the process in terminal, go grab a cup of coffee, and come back a bit later, and there ya go.

          It isn't first principles - in this case, it's just going in and typing a bit, and the computer just does what it would do if I had rolled my own or bought software. Just i

        • What a load of BS. Just use the right tool for the job. 90% of the time, the right tool is a CLI, but people like you are too busy going to meetings to bother learning how. Thus, you cry and whine every time someone asserts their superiority. Doesn't make them less superior, just highlights your shortcomings.

  • Just how big is this subset: People who are contrarian enough to go find and purchase a niche machine with an alternate CPU, but who are also not contrarian enough to load an alternate OS?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by wed128 ( 722152 )
      These people care about size and battery life, and don't care about the chip inside. You can already buy ARM machines running windows; now it's just easier to wipe and reload when you inevitably mess up your windows install

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Personally I hope this spurs manufacturers to build a common ARM platform like we have with x86, UEFI, and ACPI device enumeration. But hopefully it won't be like WinRT where devices were locked and could not boot anything other than Windows. Linux could surely benefit from a standardized ARM boot environment. Having to use vendor-specific kernels and distros gets really old, as well as reliance on board-specific devicetree, is a pain.

    • Errr by "contrarian" you mean buying an off the shelf Microsoft product on display at Bestbuy? Why would someone buy a hardware device like e.g. a Surface Pro with a Snapdragon X CPU from Microsoft and then load Linux on it?

  • Raspberry Pi 5 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does this run on a Raspberry Pi?

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