Windows 11 Insider Preview builds continue to arrive quickly and furiously. Just a few weeks ago, the next version of Windows went from development builds to beta, indicating that Microsoft thinks it’s time to let more people in. The beta ring is receiving fewer releases that would have undergone further testing compared to the developer releases, which have been arriving weekly or even faster lately. However, version 22000.160 is now available and it is now possible to install the operating system from scratch through a publicly available ISO.
To get the ISO, you must sign up for one of Microsoft’s Windows Insider Preview channels. The Developer Channel gets the fastest, most furious releases with the least amount of internal testing. The next step is the beta channel, which just opened recently. These versions have undergone somewhat more rigorous testing and should be more stable than the development versions. Whichever you choose, the latest ISO available from Microsoft is for Insider Preview build 2200.132, not the newer build 160. After installation, be sure to select your preferred ring before running Windows Update in order to get the features and versions you want.
Get Windows 11 installed with the help of your friend Rufus
ISO is available as a direct download from Microsoft and can be burned to a double-layer DVD-R disc. However, most people don’t have blank double-layer discs, and even optical drives are rather rare. Lucky for us, there’s Rufus, the creator of the USB install drive. Rufus is a very simple utility that can be downloaded for free. All we needed is a spare USB drive, which will be erased by Rufus as part of the installation process, and the Windows 11 ISO.
After plugging the player into the PC, launch Rufus and make sure the correct device is selected from the Device drop-down list. In the boot selection picker, choose Disk or ISO Image. On the right, click the Select button and navigate to the ISO downloaded from Microsoft’s Windows 11 Insider Preview page. Everything else is set based on the settings found in the ISO, so click start. Rufus will warn that the process will erase the drive, so make sure there is nothing important to back up and then continue. After about a minute, depending on the speed of the drive, the process ends and it is ready for a fresh install. On most PCs, accessing a boot menu involves pressing the Delete or F2 key at boot and choosing the USB drive from a boot menu.
We walked through the process with a brand new virtual machine running on Hyper-V, the virtualization tool built into Windows 10. When all was said and done, Windows 11 told us that the machine did not meet the minimum requirements for it. Windows 11 The default options when creating a new VM gave the system 12 logical cores and only 2 GB of RAM on our Ryzen 9 5900X benchmark with 32 GB of memory. Giving the virtualized guest 8GB of RAM after installation cleared the requirements error, ultimately allowing Windows 11 to install beta 22000.160.
Navigate the Windows 11 installation experience
The first part of the installation process is the same as Windows 10, but after restarting the system, the new out-of-the-box experience (OOBE) takes over and it’s much more user-friendly than before. New features have appeared in the setup process, including naming the machine. If you like the old “DESKTOP-†naming convention with a random ID, you can select Ignore for now, but we prefer to have meaningful PC names.
The rest of the process is mostly just a new coat of paint on top of the steps we saw in Windows 10. We can confirm that the new OOBE still requires a Microsoft account if it detects an internet connection, so make sure you have to pull the cord if you want a local account only. In Hyper-V, we could avoid this by selecting “Not Connected” in the Network Adapter section of the settings.
If you’re adventurous and ready to dive into the next version of Windows, go to the Insider Preview page and sign up for the beta. For everyone else, Windows 11 will be available at the end of the year, but free in-place upgrades won’t be rolled out through Windows Update until early 2022. Windows 10 will still be supported for years to come. , especially for those who have unsupported or lacking hardware. a hardware TPM connection.
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