Microsoft actually has a guide for manual partitioning, which this guide does not follow. [1] The Microsoft guide cleans the whole disk and ensures the 100MB EFI partition is before the 16MB MSR partition.<p>[1] <a href="https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/configure-uefigpt-based-hard-drive-partitions?view=windows-11" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactu...</a>
I installed Windows 10 the other week - it kinda blew my mind how poor the install experience was.<p>The iso contained files greater than 4GB, which breaks fat32, which I'm sure many people are still using on flash drives. So I had to use an MS cmd-line tool to split the wim files manually and edit the install files. Why doesn't the installer just use smaller archive files?
The very best was for last... After all the files are in place but before the reboot (or even during setup if using offline media) remain offline until you've signed in.<p>In fact, don't even set a _password_ initially. Change that AFTER the first boot so the installer doesn't interrogate for recovery information / etc.<p>"""
Bypass OOBE<p>The Out of Box Experience is changing all the time. The requirement to be online or only use a Microsoft account. Bypass it with this command and using Shift+F10 to bring up the command prompt. NOTE: DISCONNECT FROM INTERNET before booting!<p>oobe\BypassNRO<p>System will restart after executing the command. Select Continue with limited Setup and name the device and create a local account.
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I’ve learnt the hard way that it’s best to let Windows do whatever it wants on the entire drive or virtual machine. Anything out of the ordinary gets broken in the next update.<p>Hardware is much cheaper than time.
It is nice to know that there is still a simple-ish way to bypass linking your account to a Microsoft Account at install time.<p>A couple of days ago I was reinstalling Windows on a machine that was new enough that the wireless drivers weren't available on install, and was surprised that the installer just would not let me proceed with the install like used to.<p>Of course, even if you manage to install Windows with a local-only account, that doesn't mean that it is going to be easy to keep it that way. At least you'll get to have your choice of username, though!
Thanks for the article, just what I needed. I ran into a dreaded "Setup was unable to create a system partition" and couldn't find any solution, but with these steps, it worked!
I find it funny that the title is "the Arch Linux Way". I remember a time, as young man (in my 20s) when you couldn't reasonably expect a GUI installer for Linux. When Anaconda came out, that blew everybody's mind (at the time). It really depended on which distro-sphere you frequented as I know there were newer graphical installers that came before Anaconda, but were not as widely distributed.
Just the other night I was looking at the way a Windows 10 install wrote the EFI partition to some random disk it was not installed on at all, and wishing for this, the GUI installer just does ridiculous shit and is really not up to par with even some no name Linux distro's Calamares. I have no idea why people buy this shit, it's Microsoft's luck that it comes preinstalled and most users never touch it
If you install Windows a lot, get yourself an answer file for unattended installs (you can generate one oneline). It turns all the clicking and typing into booting the ISO (potentially through Ventoy, which would allow you to pick between answer files), and waiting for the desktop to show up
This reminds me of a tool I built a number of years ago to do unattended installs of Windows over PXE, for an IT services company I worked for at the time. It completed much faster than using DVDs or thumb drives, and could serve many machines at once.<p><a href="https://github.com/jakogut/kiwi">https://github.com/jakogut/kiwi</a>
This method is obviously exploratory and tongue-in-cheek but Titus has a great, more serious Windows 11 installation and configuration post and YouTube video here:<p><a href="https://christitus.com/windows-11-perfect-install/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://christitus.com/windows-11-perfect-install/</a>
Tip: diskpart.exe only needs the first three letters of a command:<p>> ass letter=c<p>Certain subcommands also support three letters, such as create partition primary:<p>> cre par pri
I installed Windows recently and it didn't want to create a partition. Tried all kind of black magic (you can do a lot of stuff using the tools on the install media). Finally I copied the windows usb onto the hdd and booted from it, that did the trick.