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New VMWare version for m-series Macs ... where to get Windows 11 ARM Preview ISO?

Fishrrman

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Feb 20, 2009
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Is there any easy way (emphasis on EASY) to get an ISO (an ISO and NOT a "vhdx" file) of Windows 11 ARM Preview that can be installed using the new trial of VMWare Fusion on an m-series Mac?

Seems like one can download ".vhdx" files all day, but VMWare can't use these, and nowhere can one find an ISO version of W11 ARM Preview.

Is there any way to convert a vhdx file to an iso ...?
 
Last edited:
Fishrrman said:
Is there any easy way (emphasis on EASY) to get an ISO (an ISO and NOT a "vhdx" file) of Windows 11 ARM Preview that can be installed using the new trial of VMWare Fusion on an m-series Mac?

Seems like one can download ".vhdx" files all day, but VMWare can't use these, and nowhere can one find an ISO version of W11 ARM Preview.

Is there any way to convert a vhdx file to an iso ...?
Click to expand...
Follow this guide:
www.squarecubed.co.uk

Running Windows on an M1 Mac

First and foremost, the thing to understand is that the standard installations of Windows won’t work. They are designed for Intel processors (known as x86 or x64 processors). The new Apple M1 silicon is based on the RISC processors designed and licensed by ARM. Apple do supply the Rosetta 2 app...
www.squarecubed.co.uk www.squarecubed.co.uk

You need qemu for convert the VHDX file into the VMDK that VMWare needs.
There are versions of qemu for Mac, Windows and Linux. I did the conversion
on an old PC to avoid installing Homebrew on my Mac.

The guide above is correct until the point that Windows 11 ask for an internet connection
to continue. At that moment, you need to press FN + F10 and instead of the BCEDITS
commands, just type OOBE\BYPASSNRO.
Next time that the assistant runs, it would show an option that says "I don't have internet".
After the assistant is done, you are on the Windows 11 desktop.

To run the VMWare Tools setup you need some help from PowerShell.
Here's what to do (Page 18 and forward):
Tech Preview Testing Guide
 
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diego.caraballo said:
I did the conversion on an old PC to avoid installing Homebrew on my Mac.
Click to expand...
You don’t need all that on Windows, simply download the latest A64 esd directly from Microsoft and convert it to iso with Dism++.

Code: 
http://dl.delivery.mp.microsoft.com/filestreamingservice/files/78630d4b-9cdc-44ee-9c4a-fd14e8d72936/22000.318.211104-1236.co_release_svc_refresh_CLIENTCONSUMER_RET_A64FRE_en-us.esd

https://github.com/Chuyu-Team/Dism-Multi-language/releases
 
bogdanw said:
You don’t need all that on Windows, simply download the latest A64 esd directly from Microsoft and convert it to iso with Dism++.

Code: 
http://dl.delivery.mp.microsoft.com/filestreamingservice/files/78630d4b-9cdc-44ee-9c4a-fd14e8d72936/22000.318.211104-1236.co_release_svc_refresh_CLIENTCONSUMER_RET_A64FRE_en-us.esd

https://github.com/Chuyu-Team/Dism-Multi-language/releases
Click to expand...
Thank you for the tip!

The VHDX that I downloaded from Windows Insider seems to be a newer version than the ESD on the link:
Screen Shot 2022-08-08 at 15.07.47.png
 
diego.caraballo said:
Follow this guide:
www.squarecubed.co.uk

Running Windows on an M1 Mac

First and foremost, the thing to understand is that the standard installations of Windows won’t work. They are designed for Intel processors (known as x86 or x64 processors). The new Apple M1 silicon is based on the RISC processors designed and licensed by ARM. Apple do supply the Rosetta 2 app...
www.squarecubed.co.uk www.squarecubed.co.uk

You need qemu for convert the VHDX file into the VMDK that VMWare needs.
There are versions of qemu for Mac, Windows and Linux. I did the conversion
on an old PC to avoid installing Homebrew on my Mac.

The guide above is correct until the point that Windows 11 ask for an internet connection
to continue. At that moment, you need to press FN + F10 and instead of the BCEDITS
commands, just type OOBE\BYPASSNRO.
Next time that the assistant runs, it would show an option that says "I don't have internet".
After the assistant is done, you are on the Windows 11 desktop.

To run the VMWare Tools setup you need some help from PowerShell.
Here's what to do (Page 18 and forward):
Tech Preview Testing Guide
Click to expand...

So I tried to install Windows 11 ARM on an M2 MBA with the VMWare Tech Preview.

The guide worked up until W11 booted and the Microsoft account screen came up.

The OOBE command didn't work for me, and neither did dropping to the command line and doing:

ipconfig /release

as documented in the PDF didn't work either.

Apparently Microsoft is getting wise to these tricks.

I wound up having to create a Microsoft account and THEN used that to create a local account, which I then granted admin rights to.

Anybody know where we can download the latest W11 ARM VHDX? I know about uup, but it doesnt give me a VHDX image, it just gives me all the W11 installers in a loose folder that's not a VHDX..

The Insider Preview page only offers up build 22598, and there's apparently a build 22600 available.. plus I keep getting an intermittent blue window that tells me that 22598 'this build is expired' or something similar.
 
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Earl Urley said:
So I tried to install Windows 11 ARM on an M2 MBA with the VMWare Tech Preview.

The guide worked up until W11 booted and the Microsoft account screen came up.

The OOBE command didn't work for me, and neither did dropping to the command line and doing:

ipconfig /release

as documented in the PDF didn't work either.

Apparently Microsoft is getting wise to these tricks.

I wound up having to create a Microsoft account and THEN used that to create a local account, which I then granted admin rights to.

Anybody know where we can download the latest W11 ARM VHDX? I know about uup, but it doesnt give me a VHDX image, it just gives me all the W11 installers in a loose folder that's not a VHDX..

The Insider Preview page only offers up build 22598, and there's apparently a build 22600 available.. plus I keep getting an intermittent blue window that tells me that 22598 'this build is expired' or something similar.
Click to expand...
The user bogdanw in a previous post included a link to an ESD file. I downloaded it 2 days ago and converted to ISO using Dism++ as he suggested. It's very easy to do on a Windows machine (graphic UI instead of command line)

With that ISO, the Windows welcome screen showed the "I don't have internet" message right away, so the OOBE command wasn't necessary.

I had to do this because my build has expired as yours. Now, thanks to bogdanw I have a final release.
One thing not working is time sync, my virtual machine starts with old time and date on every launch and
if you try to manually sync to the time server, it fails.

Also I'm not getting the latest release, it's stuck with the 21H2 version. Not sure why though.
 
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diego.caraballo said:
One thing not working is time sync, my virtual machine starts with old time and date on every launch and
if you try to manually sync to the time server, it fails.

Also I'm not getting the latest release, it's stuck with the 21H2 version. Not sure why though.
Click to expand...
Install the Ethernet driver from VMware tools (vmxnwt3).

As far as I can tell, Windows 11 22H2 has not yet been released for ARM.

There is a new VMware Fusion Public Tech Preview
https://customerconnect.vmware.com/downloads/get-download?downloadGroup=FUS-PUBTP-22H2
 
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bogdanw said:
Install the Ethernet driver from VMware tools (vmxnwt3).

As far as I can tell, Windows 11 22H2 has not yet been released for ARM.

There is a new VMware Fusion Public Tech Preview
https://customerconnect.vmware.com/downloads/get-download?downloadGroup=FUS-PUBTP-22H2
Click to expand...
Running VMWare Fusion 13.0.1 on M1 Mac, converted W11 Arm release to ISO as described above, then imported to VMWare and trying to boot from that image/have VMWare set up a virtual machine, and got stuck on this screen. Anybody know what that means and how to get W11 Arm to run?
 

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It may be a problem with your boot order - your VM did not find an install / boot medium and therefore booted into a UEFI shell
 
Romain_H said:
It may be a problem with your boot order - your VM did not find an install / boot medium and therefore booted into a UEFI shell
Click to expand...
Yes, when trying to create the VM from the ISO image, I get the following prompt. Any idea how to resolve this? Thanks
 

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Not sure if that's the issue. Did you configure a virtual install medium, like an .ISO image containing the Windows installer?
 
lmitrev said:
Yes, when trying to create the VM from the ISO image, I get the following prompt. Any idea how to resolve this? Thanks
Click to expand...
You do need secure boot enabled but beyond that I'm not sure where the issue you're having originates.
 
Romain_H said:
Not sure if that's the issue. Did you configure a virtual install medium, like an .ISO image containing the Windows installer?
Click to expand...
I resolved the issue by hitting any key on the initial splash screen ("Press any key to boot from CD or DVD...". Windows installation started then got stuck at network setup - not finding network
 

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Since I’ve last checked, Windows 11 22H2 ARM esd has been released.
Code: 
http://dl.delivery.mp.microsoft.com/filestreamingservice/files/3da94e91-327c-48ce-8bc8-7a2af30fc4bc/22621.525.220925-0207.ni_release_svc_refresh_CLIENTCONSUMER_RET_A64FRE_en-us.esd
I'm converting it now to ISO.
 
No problem in installing the above esd, converted into iso with Dism, in VMware Fusion 13.0.1 on MBA M1 macOS 12.6.3.
I’ve disabled the Network adapter during installation and used Shift + F10 and OOBE\BYPASSNRO to bypass the Internet requirement.
Windows 11 Pro 22H2
Windows_11_22H2.jpg
 
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