It mentions hitting Shift+F10. Wish it mentioned how to that non-interactively.
Install Windows the Arch Linux Way
11–20 of 139 posts
Re: Install Windows the Arch Linux Way
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are, but by my personal experience those other ways might stop working every other Windows update and need tweaking/changing.
Yes, it is a continuous fight with Microsoft, though. They are pretty hostile to their end-users.
end-users don't install windows
Re: Install Windows the Arch Linux Way
#13I installed Windows 10 the other week - it kinda blew my mind how poor the install experience was.
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?
Re: Install Windows the Arch Linux Way
#14I installed Windows 10 the other week - it kinda blew my mind how poor the install experience was. 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?
So, it does... but only if it's made using the media creation tool. ISOs or USBs made with MCT use the better compressed ESD format for the install archive. Only the direct ISO download uses the less-compressed WIM.
Re: Install Windows the Arch Linux Way
#15It mentions hitting Shift+F10. Wish it mentioned how to that non-interactively.
You probably don't want to go down that rabbit hole. (trust me, I've done it, it is littered with footguns and sometimes incorrect documentation, and outdated advice. Lots of things are legacy, the docs are extensive but still only scratch the surface)
Search for unattended install, autounattend.xml, Windows System Image Manager, Windows Imaging Toolkit. Don't try to install WSIM from windows store, as that version doesn't work. (this alone can save half a day of debugging phantom problems). There are extensive docs on the topic, but they are sometimes incorrect, contain incorrect code, etc.
You can start from here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/customize...
Re: Install Windows the Arch Linux Way
#16It mentions hitting Shift+F10. Wish it mentioned how to that non-interactively.
You can do this with an unattend file [0], you can use the Windows ADK [1] to build one, or 3rd-party tools like NTLite [2].
[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactu... [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/get-start... [2] https://www.ntlite.com/
Re: Install Windows the Arch Linux Way
#17I installed Windows 10 the other week - it kinda blew my mind how poor the install experience was. 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?
You can make an NTFS USB stick as well then run bootsect on it and it’ll boot. That’ll take wim files of any size.
Re: Install Windows the Arch Linux Way
#18I installed Windows 10 the other week - it kinda blew my mind how poor the install experience was. 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?
I believe Microsoft provides the Media Creation Tool for this purpose.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-installat...
Re: Install Windows the Arch Linux Way
#19I’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.
Hardware is much cheaper than time.
Re: Install Windows the Arch Linux Way
#20I installed Windows 10 the other week - it kinda blew my mind how poor the install experience was. 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?
But then you'd use the same method as installing other OS and people would realise installing a Linux distro is easy. Of course MS already made it much harder with secureboot and "accidentally" wiping Linux installs when you install it second.
Given the massive updates you immediately have to download, and the heavy push for only installing with an online account, there seems little reason to have anything beyond a minimal net installer on the USB stick.
Microsoft taught me to be this cynical about their motives over a few decades.