Hey ya'll. I've noticed quit a few posts about installing on vhd and noticed several responses regarding boot partitions and what not. I just wanted to clear something up...
It is ABSOLUTELY possible to install Windows 10 or Windows 11 on to a single partition. I have done it successfully on both a physical hard drive and on to a VHD. Doing it on a VHD is especially nice because I find it's easier to backup and also I've found it less likely to have issues with booting, either from EFI or from BIOS.
So the method I prefer is to use an MBR partition table because from my experiences with this, it's more universal and seems to have a more durable boot.
In order to do this though you need to know how to use GParted(I prefer the live ISO), you also need a WinPE to boot in to after, a Windows ISO of your choice and this beautiful program WinNTSetup (you're amazing by the way).
In GParted, select your device then create a new MSDOS partition table.
Once that completes, create a single partition spanning the entire drive. Select "NTFS" for the filesystem. Then click the apply button on the toolbar.
Once it finishes creating the partition, right click the partition and select "Manage Flags". Select "Boot" and "ESP". Then click okay. It should apply it immediately.
Then reboot in to your WinPE of choice. From there open BootICE from the WinNTSetup folder (WinNTSetup>Tools>x64>BootICE) in the first tab, select your drive, then "Process MBR" and install WinNT 6. Then Process PBR and install BootMGR.
After that open WinNTSetup and customized it however you want. Before you install, put the .reg file I have attached in to any folder by itself, then open the tweaks area in WinNTSetup and at the bottom click the search button and open the folder where the .reg file is located.
This Reg File makes it so when you first boot in to windows it goes directly to cmd.exe and not oobe.
Disables Cursor Suppression
Enables Verbose Status Messages on Login
And Disables Windows 11 requirement checks.
Then install windows with WinNTSetup
Once it finishes, reboot in to your new windows installation. It will go directly to a blank screen with just cmd.exe
Enter these commands exactly:
oobe\windeploy
##This will begin the rest of the windows installation##
##DO NOT CLOSE CMD.EXE##
##At the bottom of the screen wait until it says "Getting Ready" then enter these commands##
net user /add USERNAME
net localgroup /add users USERNAME
net localgroup /add administrators USERNAME
regedit
Once RegEdit opens, go to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup"
Change the following values:
"OOBEInProgress" = 0
"SetupType" = 0
"SystemSetupInProgress" = 0
Then close Regedit and CMD.exe.
It often reboots here and reboots you directly in to the final part of the windows installation. If you timed it right then it will skip all the setup except the last part and if you didn't then you'll have to create a new local account (the account you created in cmd is there so you'll have to create a temp account to log in to and then sign in to your other account after you finish the setup) and that's it. Now you have a fully functional windows installation on one single partition. No fuss, no muss. Updates work and microsoft is none the wiser. I use variations of this method for VHDs or Portable USB installs as well. They all work perfectly and I have not had any issues for over a year now using this method. On both Windows 10 and Windows 11.
I cannot take credit for this method.
This method is just a variation of installing windows that I learned from here:
I apologize if this isn't helpful or if I am doing something I'm not supposed to do. I just wanted to pass this info along because it has helped me so much (along with WinNTSetup). I probably won't be able to respond very often to this post but if you have questions, feel free to ask me. I'm not the best writer or very good at tutorials so I apologize if any of what I said was confusing or not useful. I did my best and I hope it helps someone, somehow. Thank you for your amazing program. Good hunting out there ya'll.
Sincerely,
Pipedream
Suck It Microsoft.reg
