[Guide] How to install Windows 11 on ROCK 5B

[maycides]

Preparation we need：

1. A ROCK 5B SBC, PD 30W adapter, monitor, HDMI cable, an eMMC module/SD card and eMMC/SD card reader

2. Windows PC with WTG(Windows To Go) tool(https://dl.luobotou.org/wtga5610.zip) and flash tool(rufus、balena Etcher)

3. An usb flash drive with at least 32GB storage, with the faster 4K W/R performance the better ,or it’ll fail or be very slowly

4. USB3.0 docking station,USB keyboard,USB mouse

5. Windows 11 arm ISO file

6. UEFI image of ROCK 5B ,it can be downloaded in the release of this repo: https://github.com/edk2-porting/edk2-rk35xx .

Steps：

1. Flash UEFI: Flash the UEFI to eMMC/SD by flash tool,then load it into the board
   

   

2. Make WinToGo usb flash drive by WinToGo tool(This step costs few hours if you use low performance usb flash drive)
   

   
   
   

3. Connect the WinToGo usb flash drive to the above USB3.0 port, connect the docking station with keyboard and mouse to the USB3.0 port below

4. Connect the monitor by the HDMI port near the USB-C port
   

   
   

5. Power the board

6. At the first time, we should press F3 and choose windows boot,then the windows installer will work

   After a few minutes(or more time),an error message will appear and tells you windows cannot work on this machine. At this time,press shift + F10 to enter windows console

   Then we need to edit the registry by regedit,following are what we must edit

   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionSetupState]

   "ImageState"="IMAGE_STATE_COMPLETE"

   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMSetup]

   "SetupPhase"=dword:00000000

   "SetupType"=dword:00000000

   "OOBEInProgress"=dword:00000000

   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMSetupStatusChildCompletion]

   "oobeldr.exe"=dword:00000003

   "SetupFinalTasks"=dword:00000003

   Anther important thing is that we should enable administrator account,or you’ll have not account to enter system. This is the command:

   net user Administrator /active:yes

   After these operations,reboot: shutdown /r /t 0,windows will coming soon
   Thanks to everyone involved in the development for ROCK 5B!

[DarkevilPT]

Great Job ! Can it run crysis now ?

Requirements Test

[zerorating]

never thought this will happen so soon.
did radxa send some boards to microsoft silently?

[DarkevilPT]

I dont think they needed. This ‘port’ wasnt made by Microsoft.
Windows on Arm has been available for ages…
But… the right setups to make it work on rockchips…
Was granted by this group and team effort I believe:
https://worproject.com/guides/how-to-install/on-rockchip

[maycides]

hh,it’s too early now,we don’t know what day it’ll happen,who knows,maybe tomorrow?~(￣▽￣)~*

[maycides]

It’s a very nice team,I just follow their steps:grin:

[Goetterfunke]

Hi, I have followed your guide three times now (2x with 2 different SSDs and 1x with standard SanDisk USB Stick) no matter what I do I’ll get “inaccessible_boot_device” on first boot. Shift F10 is not working in the bluescreen. UEFI is working.

Edit: And one more thing: The Boot device is “broken” after first bluescreen and will not work again “synchronous exception” so for anyone who want to try it: I hope you have some free time

[Googulator]

Please use this guide instead: https://worproject.com/guides/how-to-install/on-rockchip

Those OOBE bypass registry hacks are not recommended on a real install of Windows; they result in a semi-broken installation that will not be able to be updated or serviced in the future. They should only be used for debugging and “Windows install speedrun” videos. The error message on setup is probably caused by that “WTG Assistant” tool not partitioning the drive properly. When installation is done correctly, it shouldn’t appear, instead OOBE should complete successfully.

EDIT: Also, the UEFI image is meant to be flashed into SPI, not to an SD card or EMMC, since it expects to store UEFI NVRAM data in the same flash chip.

[maycides]

thanks for adding:kissing_heart:

[darkstar]

Hi All,

Today I tested the instructions given by @maycides and it works pretty well.
The instructions I followed were like below:

1- I downloaded UEFI image for Rock5B v0.6
2- Flashed UEFI image to an sd card using balena-etcher under Ubuntu Linux,
3- I downloaded Windows 11 ARM64 iso image under Ubuntu Linux,
4- Flashed it to my USB-SSD drive using Hasleo WinToUSB tool on Windows 11.
5- I did the cable connections like @maycides says.
6- Plugged in SDCard, USB-SSD, USB Keyboard and powered on

Result is as below, there is no need to press any Function key and there is no error.
Thanks to everyone who involved in this project.

[darkstar]

Dear @maycides my Windows 11 does not recognize Ethernet and Sound drivers, how did you get them work, any link for driver downloads?

[maycides]

Hi @darkstar , I’m sorry to tell you that the driver problems have not been solved, you can use USB Network recently, but there is not a solution for Sound(Maybe I just don’t know.）

[te9lia]

The windows to go script above is infected!!!

[DarkevilPT]

Its an hack to make it work on rockchip boards other than snapdragons what do you expect…

[te9lia]

The only thing is going to hack is your pc, this not a valid reason to have it infected.

[Rafa]

@maycides I flash the UEFI to eMMC, and step 6) preceed to choose windows boot, I choose the option of usb flash drive, but the interface still remains at the option.

[Rafa]

I downloaded the Windows 11 ARM64 ISO image under Ubuntu linux, but I flashed it th my USB flash drive with Hasleo WinToUSB tool under win11, the tool showed ‘The selected file is not a valid ISO.(0x002200F100000000)’

I downloaded the windows 11 ARM64 image with UUPDump.
Is the method of downloading the image file incorrect for me?
Can you give me some help?

[darkstar]

Dear @Rafa

I tried win11 nearly one year ago let me check the iso download part for you.
No need to flash UEFİ to emmc, my instructions are as below.

1- I downloaded UEFI image for Rock5B v0.6
2- Flashed UEFI image to an sd card using balena-etcher under Ubuntu Linux,
3- I downloaded Windows 11 ARM64 iso image under Ubuntu Linux,
4- Flashed it to my USB-SSD drive using Hasleo WinToUSB tool on Windows 11.
5- I did the cable connections like @maycides says.
6- Plugged in SDCard, USB-SSD, USB Keyboard and powered on

[darkstar]

Dear @Rafa

I tried to download the Win 11 Arm64 iso image under linux.
I guess something was changed on UUPDump site, there is a warning like below.

You can try to download under Windows OS .