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juanjansen
Contributor
Contributor

Errors installing Windows 11 64-bit on M1

I'm using the VM Fusion 22H2 latest ARM version on my Macbook PRO 16" M1 2021

I'm unable to get Windows 11 installed, I have downloaded the 64-bit Windows 11 ISO.

VM Fusion keeps booting into the UEFI Shell, it does not want to boot from the Windows 11 ISO, witch should be a Bootable ISO.

What I'm I doing wrong?

Tried change the bootsetting in the BIOS, But it keeps stopping at the uEFI shell

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Technogeezer
Immortal
Immortal

What is the name of the ISO you downloaded and how exactly did you create and download it? My suspicion is that you have media that won't boot.

You might want to refer to the unofficial Tips and Techniques for the Apple Silicon Tech Preview document for tips on creating Windows 11 ARM ISO media that will boot on the Tech Preview.

 

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
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juanjansen
Contributor
Contributor

https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11

The section 

Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO)

"This option is for users that want to create a bootable installation media (USB flash drive, DVD)"

Downloaded that ISO, which should be bootable

I will also check the suggested link

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Technogeezer
Immortal
Immortal

Check the fine print in "Before you begin" in that section

  • Has a 64-bit CPU: Windows 11 can only run on 64-bit CPUs. To see if your PC has one, go to Settings > System > About, or search “System Information” in Windows and look under “System Type.” 
    • The Windows 11 ISO is only available for devices with x64 processors. For ARM-based PCs, you should wait until you are notified through Windows Update that the upgrade is ready for your PC.

If you downloaded your ISO from that link, you have media that can only be booted on Intel CPUs - it will not boot on ARM/Apple Silicon processors or VMs running on those processors.

Check the unofficial Tips and Techniques document for advice on how to download and build an ISO that will work on the Tech Preview on M1 Macs. 

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
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juanjansen
Contributor
Contributor

If so, how did VMware achieved windows 11 running on Mac M1, guess by using the UUP dump?

If that was made clear at first, that I would not have wasted so much time, to get it working.

Thankyou 🙂

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Technogeezer
Immortal
Immortal

It would not surprise me if VMware did indeed get the ISOs used to test Windows 11 ARM installs from uupdump.net. Microsoft has not been helpful in posting an ISO for Windows 11 ARM like they've done for x64 architectures. uupdump.net seems to be the only source for outsiders to get these ISOs.

Obtaining Windows 11 ARM ISO media from uupdump.net is covered in the unofficial tips and techniques document as more detail on how to obtain them is not part of Testing Guide.

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
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RDPetruska
Leadership
Leadership

Seemed pretty clear to me, reading through the document (linked on the SAME page the Fusion installer was on) of "Fusion-TP-22H2-Testing-Guide.pdf", page 5.

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Mikero
Community Manager
Community Manager

Some Enterprise Partner programs provide ISOs of this nature.

We tested with those as well as what's available on UUPdump and with converting the .VHDX, since it's unlikely most folks will have a similar agreement as VMware+MS. (Or at the very least, we have no idea who has such agreements, since Licensing is a matter between MS customers and MS.)

-
Michael Roy - Product Marketing Engineer: VCF
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juanjansen
Contributor
Contributor

With some searching found a google drive location with on old arm64 build of windows 11, guess after installing you can update to the latest build.

 

The instructions do not work on my Mac m1 (home-brew does not install on Mac OS 13)

Als the converters are windows apps, not Mac apps, the scripts cannot be run in the standard Mac terminal 

Update that old iso works.

Thankyou for all the tips

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Technogeezer
Immortal
Immortal

It would not be surprising that homebrew does not yet support an pre-release, beta version of macOS.

The converters on macOS do not use Windows apps. They use open source applications which is why homebrew is needed to install them. If you can't install homebrew on Ventura, you can't easily get the open source apps needed by the uupdump.net scripts.

You do have another option. You can run the download/build from within a Linux VM. The utilities that uupdump.net uses to build the ISO on Linux are typically found in the repos of many Linux distributions. 

My preference would be NOT to run this Fusion tech preview on pre-releases of Ventura. You are asking for trouble - it's unlikely that even VMware had the chance to do any testing with it on Ventura before releasing it to us. If you find a problem running on Ventura I suggest you try it on Monterey to see if it exists there.

As a matter of security, I do not trust any OS installer obtained from sources other than the manufacturer/distributor/author. I have no idea what may have been done to it. 

 

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
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Technogeezer
Immortal
Immortal


@RDPetruska wrote:

Seemed pretty clear to me, reading through the document (linked on the SAME page the Fusion installer was on) of "Fusion-TP-22H2-Testing-Guide.pdf", page 5.


Well there you go - I apologize for engaging keyboard before eyes and brain. 

😁

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
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gringley
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

As a MS customer I looked at my MPSA and MSDN portals.  MPSA has nothing.  MSDN (my.visualstudio.com) has "Windows 11 IoT Enterprise" as the only ISO for Windows 11 ARM to download.

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shildebrandt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

If you have MSDN you can use the IoT image mentioned above, its a full version of Win11 for Arm64. I did a successful installation with it. It does not recognise the network drivers so you need to install them through the VMware tools. 

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grizzly660fan
Contributor
Contributor

I am having the exact same issue, it boots to the UEFI shell and can't find where to go next. 

I have obtained my Win11 Arm64 version from two sources:

1. Downloaded from the Windows Insider Preview for which I have been a member for a number of years. That method provides an image with the Microsoft format that I used HomeBrew to convert to *.VHDX.  When using this file (after conversion) and following the steps in the 22H2 Testing Guide I get to page 8 click the "continue button" and never get to page 9 to see the Windows Installation, instead I get UEFI Interactive Shell v2.2 and then it stops at startup.nsh.

2. I downloaded from UUDump an image that is a *.VMDK file, it goes to exactly the same steps as mentioned above for number 1. 

Incidentally, I am unable to get to UUDump today with "bad gateway error presented. 

How do I get to the Windows startup screens?

I should note I am using an M1 Pro (Apple Silicon) MacBook Pro. 

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Technogeezer
Immortal
Immortal


@grizzly660fan wrote:

1. Downloaded from the Windows Insider Preview for which I have been a member for a number of years. That method provides an image with the Microsoft format that I used HomeBrew to convert to *.VHDX.  When using this file (after conversion) and following the steps in the 22H2 Testing Guide I get to page 8 click the "continue button" and never get to page 9 to see the Windows Installation, instead I get UEFI Interactive Shell v2.2 and then it stops at startup.nsh.


There is a typo in the Tech Preview Testing guide. The output file frrom the qemu-I’m utility should have a .vmdk  file extension, not VHDX. Try making sure the file has that extension. 

Uupdump images are typically ISO images. If there are VMDK images available, they are most likely Intel images, not arm64.I’d double check them  

 

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
grizzly660fan
Contributor
Contributor

First, thanks for the help!

I just used HomeBrew again to create a new image file and the source is:

Windows11_InsiderPreview_Client_ARM64_en-us_25158.VHDX and output is Windows11_InsiderPreview_Client_ARM64_en-us_25158.VMDK. I now think I am converting the Windows version to VMWare with proper formats. 

Here is the command I used:

qemu-img convert -p -O vmdk Windows11_InsiderPreview_Client_ARM64_en-us_25158.VHDX Windows11_InsiderPreview_Client_ARM64_en-us_25158.VMDK This is the file I obtained from the Windows Insider program as I can't get to the UUDump anymore due to the bad gateway messages anymore to try and download that again. 

Any other ideas why it won't just load? 

Again, very appreciative for the help!

I am still stuck at the same UEFI Shell prompt and it won't move to the Windows setup screens. 

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Technogeezer
Immortal
Immortal

That conversion line looks correct. I assume you created a custom virtual machine and attached the converted VMDK to the newly created VM as an existing virtual disk. You don’t drag and drop the VMDK file. 

I’m  going to give this a try from the Windows Insider Preview site download and see if what I see matches you. 

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
Technogeezer
Immortal
Immortal

I downloaded that same VM and converted it to vmdk using:

qemu-img convert -p -O vmdk Windows11_InsiderPreview_Client_ARM64_en-us_25158.VHDX Windows11_InsiderPreview_Client_ARM64_en-us_25158.vmdk

I created a new virtual machine according to the steps in the Tech Preview Testing Guide, page 22, starting the steps after "This .vmdk can now be used to create a Custom VM".

After step 8, the VM will boot.

At the first screen, instead of answering the question about the country, type shift-fn-F10 to bring up a Command prompt.

At this point. use the Fusion menu to attach the VMware Tools ISO to the VM  Virtual Machine > ReInstall VMware Tools. The ISO will be available in the VM as the D drive.

Wait a few seconds for the D drive to attach, and issue the following commands in the command line prompt:

powershell

The purpose of this command is to switch from the cmd.exe to PowerShell. Once in Powershell, type the following

d:
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
.\setup.ps1

The vmxnet3 network driver and the VMware SVGA video drivers will be installed. The VM's screen may blank momentarily while this happens. 

When the installation finished, type the following command in the PowerShell prompt:

shutdown /r /t 0

The VM will reboot and Windows will restart the setup process. The network will be found (you will know because Windows won't ask you about a network and will instead say "Checking for Updates".)

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
Technogeezer
Immortal
Immortal

A post-script to this thread:

The recommended command to convert VHDX files to .vmdk that is described in the Tech Preview Testing Guide, if used improperly, can result in a corrupted virtual hard disk file. If the original and converted files are in the same directory, and you use a command similar to this (implied by using the info in the Guide):

qemu-img convert -p -O vmdk Windows11.VHDX Windows11.vhdx

you will end up with a corrupted .vhdx file. Trying to use that incorrectly converted image will result in the VM failing to find a bootable image and dropping into PXE boot. 

To reliably get a proper conversion, make sure your destination file name is different than the source file name. Examples of what will work are:

qemu-img convert -p -O vmdk Windows11.VHDX Windows11.vmdk
qemu-img convert -p -O vmdk Windows11.VHDX NewWindows11.vmdk
- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
grizzly660fan
Contributor
Contributor

@Technogeezer  Let me again thank you for all your help with this topic, you have gone above and beyond in your help to me and I appreciate your efforts!!!

I was NOT changing the output name on the file when I converted it using qemu and suspect I was getting a corrupt source file that was NOT mounting properly. I sheepishly also admit I was drag and dropping the vmdk file improperly vs using the instructions provided on page 22 of the 22H2 Tech Preview guide. 

I am now beyond the steps that were only getting to the UEFI and again I appreciate your help!!

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