Raspberry Pi 5: Installing Windows 11

Previously I have had a Raspberry Pi 3b+  and after that I had a Raspberry Pi 4, 8GB, both which I ran Windows 10 on. Times have changed and I got the next generation of this single board computer now. During my research I found out that there now are people that have managed to get Windows 11 Enterprise running on a Raspberry Pi 5. 

Keep in mind that the platform uses ARM processor so that you will get that version of Windows, but it is also supposed to have a built-in system that can simulate the x64 architecture.

One of my experiments that I have planned, is to keep a Minecraft Bedrock server running on my Raspberry Pi 5 that will be installed with Windows 11.

The hardware

For this project I got the following hardware which set me back €178 or 1999 SEK.
The following is a breakdown of the costs converted to EUR.

SanDisk Extreme microSD card (128gb) €27

Kingston DataTraveler Micro Metal (256gb) €22

Raspberry Pi 5 (8gb) €76

Original case with fan €9

Charger €11

Import fee/VAT €33

I bought my Raspberry Pi 5 from The Pi Hut. The purchase experience was relatively smooth, but the transport time was super slow (keep in mind that I had already been waiting quite some time since my pre-purchase). Then the Pi got stuck in transit because I had to pay €30 in import fees as well. It was shipped around 29:th of December and has to this date not yet arrived. Something to keep in mind when you pick your point of purchase in other words.

The installation process

For this experiment, I followed this video to get Windows 11 on Raspberry Pi 5.

You will need UEFI-files (the files used for booting up pretty much) which can be downloaded here. 

Once downloaded, unzip the archive and place the files on your SD-card. The SD-card needs to be formatted as FAT32, I had trouble flashing it so had to partition it to a part that was smaller than 32GB.

Download the Win11 Enterprise ARM64 image as well from this link, this is what you flash to the USB.

As of January 2024 I used the following settings: Windows 11, latest build, ARM64 architecture, Enterprise edition and English (UK) as language.

You will need the WoR (Windows on Raspberry) program, this contains the script that allows flashing of the iso. Download and then extract contents to a new folder that you name to something intelligible.

Start WoR.exe as admin, go through the guide, make sure to choose Raspberry Pi 3. This is because boot files and main OS are kept separately at this stage. This step took a long time, so make sure to start early.

Put the SD card and the USB into the Raspberry Pi and your peripherals, then boot it up. After that it is pretty much a standard Windows 11 experience, but you are not running an activated version so you will miss out on certain customization.

Verdict

Well, after a lot of struggle I managed to get it running. The experience albeit familiar, it was also extremely slow, you can not do anything practical with this setup at this point. There can be minutes of delay after pressing a key and SFC /scannow and the DISM restorehealth commands can take hours, just to fail. Getting a bedrock server on this setup would not be feasible, neither RDP or Enable-PSRemoting worked.

Perhaps in the future there will be a better experience, but for now my recommendation is to not run with this setup. It was a good experiment.