Windows 11 Pro on a Pi 4B

[Darth Vader]

Some recent posts on pfm got me thinking that I hadn't had a play with any of my Pi models recently. My last aborted project around two or so years ago was implementing Win 10 so yesterday I went for Win 11 Pro.

It works surprisingly well for this little Pi 4 with just 4GB RAM. However if anyone is thinking about this as a project beware that drivers are not available for many devices. I fell for this when I couldn't get WiFi to work (Ethernet is fine). I even used a USB WiFi dongle thats known to work with Windows, macOS and Linux but no luck. Delving into the Registry I found that Windows did find the USB nic and created an entry for it however there was no driver. Then the penny dropped. Drivers are written by the hardware manufacturers and since they work down at what I call the 'bare metal' will be written in assembler unlike the rest of Windows. To my knowledge no one has written such Windows drivers for the ARM Cortex-A72 CPU. This goes for any other utility etc. For example Mini Partition Wizard does install but won't run with a disk access error.

BTW I can get WiFi access by using an Ethernet-WiFi bridge but it sort of defeats the object and adds additional costs to what for most will be a budget system

Libre Office works fine so I guess other Win apps will too providing they don't utilise drivers that access the hardware directly.

Fun eh?

DV

 

[suzywong]

Not sure why any sane person would want to run Windoze 11 on an RPi.

 

[robs]

Not sure why any sane person would want to run Windoze 11 on an RPi.

Yup...other than being able to say 'I did it!'.

If you actually have a need for a small cheap Win11 machine then IMHO it would make much more sense to just buy an old s/h Lenovo M910q or similar (£100 or so) and run it on that. It just works, without the hassle..

 

[suzywong]

According to Windoze Update, my desktop PC is “unable” to run Windoze 11………

…as you can imagine, I am devastated!

 

[robs]

It probably can if you want to try it (but it certainly seems no gamechanger!) ...basically it needs TPM 2.0 (which most PC's from the last few years have - but maybe not turned on), and Secure Boot (ditto) and a supported processor (more problematic). But there is a simple workaround to get over the processor issue (and the others). Formally it means you may not get updates etc, but it seems it is all working fine for most people (myself included with an i5-6500T CPU).
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-upgrade-unsupported-computer-windows-11

 

[suzywong]

That's interesting......although I had been hoping to swing a mobo/cpu/ram upgrade past the 'comptroller of finances' on the back of it

Well, 'tis either that or an XPS ps for the Hifi.

Edit: looked at @robs link, then looked at my registry. I do not have "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup" folder", so not sure their method would work.

Sadly, no Win11 for me. I can hardly contain my indifference.

 

[robs]

I do not have "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup" folder"

You can just add one (that's what I did)...you know you want to...indifferent or not....:

• In Windows 10, open the Registry Editor by tapping the Windows key and then entering “Registry Editor” or regedit in the search box.
• Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup. If the folder isn’t there, right-click the Setup folder and create the MoSetup subfolder.
• Within the MoSetup folder, right-click and select New >DWORD (32-bit) Value
• Name the new registry entry AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU. Double-click it, then change the registry value to 1.

My comptroller has zero interest, so no way the budget was getting modified...



Dammit...I'm going to have to try it on a Pi now...

 

[Darth Vader]

That's interesting......although I had been hoping to swing a mobo/cpu/ram upgrade past the 'comptroller of finances' on the back of it

Well, 'tis either that or an XPS ps for the Hifi.

Edit: looked at @robs link, then looked at my registry. I do not have "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup" folder", so not sure their method would work.

Sadly, no Win11 for me. I can hardly contain my indifference.

You must have blinked and missed it. I have Win 11 Pro running on a 2010 Mac Mini.

If you do want to run Win 11 on an older none compliant (according to M$) computer perhaps start a new topic. Its a funny old World as I have in front of me printed in black and white in a Windows achitecture book published by the M$ press "There will not be an official 'Windows 11'; instead ... the existing Windows 10 will be updated to a new version."

DV

 

[Darth Vader]

It probably can if you want to try it (but it certainly seems no gamechanger!) ...basically it needs TPM 2.0 (which most PC's from the last few years have - but maybe not turned on), and Secure Boot (ditto) and a supported processor (more problematic). But there is a simple workaround to get over the processor issue (and the others). Formally it means you may not get updates etc, but it seems it is all working fine for most people (myself included with an i5-6500T CPU).
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-upgrade-unsupported-computer-windows-11

Actually thats not true. Rather those are the artificial rules laid down by M$ and if your machine fails these the Win 11 installer baulks. Win 11 can install and run well on older configurations. One of the simplest ways is to upgrade an existing Win 10 installation. I recently had an old (and dead) HP laptop with Win 10 Home installed on a HDD that I upgraded to Win 11 Pro on a new SSD. No problems so far with updates but time will tell.

DV

 

[Darth Vader]

Not sure why any sane person would want to run Windoze 11 on an RPi.

"The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK-based charity that works to put the power of computing and digital making into the hands of people all over the world. We do this so that more people are able to harness the power of computing and digital technologies for work, to solve problems that matter to them, and to express themselves creatively.

We work to deepen our understanding of how young people learn about computing and digital making, and to use that knowledge to increase the impact of our own work and to advance the field of computing education. We make computing and digital making accessible to all through providing low-cost, high-performance single-board computers and free software."

As they used to say 'once a teacher always a teacher'.

DV

 

[TalYWaun]

.Drivers are written by the hardware manufacturers and since they work down at what I call the 'bare metal' will be written in assembler unlike the rest of Windows.
DV

The usual meaning of ‘bare metal’ is no Operating System, i.e. Your Code takes total control over All the hardware. As for Windows Drivers they are normally written in C/C++ (see Windows WDK). Assembly language has a place (for some very, very, high speed applications, but at a guess that would be the 0.1% I used to work on) where you don’t want the compiler making decisions over the resulting machine code. Kudos for getting W11 to run on a Pi, but for what purpose?

 

[Darth Vader]

Thats possibly the source as the very first 'computers' I programmed didn't have an operating system nor even the luxury of a symbolic assembler. I had to work in machine code and that was a lot of fun especially when I got the relative jumps wrong! I soon learnt how to save my work slooooowly to tape before hitting run - oh and using a monitor to single step and set break points. Good fun.

I worked with a very early version of C on some Honeywell mainframes and would hand edit the resulting assembler output from the compiler as it tended to be very inefficient code at the time. Kernighan and Ritchie (I still have their book on C somewhere!) were the reason I went into Comms..........

Purpose? I like solving problems and it keeps dementia at bay. I was once told that it was impossible to boot a mainframe from its then very new 5.25" diskette so I spent a day whilst the mainframe was free and did just that. I remember the MD of the company telling me that people shouldn't say things couldn't be done because I just went ahead and did it anyway. Oh and the purpose? It saved the company I was employed by a lot of time and money.

DV