Yet Another Way to Install Windows 11 Without a TPM

And possibly even an unsupported CPU.

Can you install Windows 11 on computers that don’t meet Microsoft’s published minimum requirements?

Yes. No. Sometimes.

The most commonly cited problems are the specific CPUs required (relatively new) and TPM 2.0. TPM stands for Trusted Platform Module and is a cryptoprocessor that provides a range of security features used by Windows 11 when present.

There have been a variety of workarounds to getting Windows 11 installed on machines not meeting those criteria, but they all seem to be eventually shut down by Microsoft… except for one. That one workaround, while not the simplest of approaches, could be around for a while (even Microsoft says so).

Windows 11 without a TPM

Microsoft’s documentation notes a workaround for installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware. Using DISM, you can apply a Windows 11 image directly to a disk, bypassing TPM 2.0 and CPU checks. While complex, this method provides a viable solution. Beware that unsupported hardware may face future issues.

Installing on unsupported hardware

On a page titled Ways to install Windows 11, near the bottom, after all the “traditional” approaches, Microsoft includes this statement:

The key phrase in the important warning is:

An image install of Windows 11 will not check for the following requirements: TPM 2.0 (at least TPM 1.2 is required) and CPU family and model.

They call it a warning. I call it an opportunity.

Setting up an initial Windows 11 installation using an image install is complicated and somewhat arcane. But it’s certainly possible.

Let’s do it.

Getting started

First, you’ll need a Windows 11 installation ISO. You can download that from Microsoft.

You need to burn or copy it to something you can boot from. Typically that means burning it to a DVD or using a tool like Rufus to create a bootable USB drive.

Boot the target machine from this Windows 11 installation media.

The installer will start and present its initial screen.

Don’t click anything.

Instead, type SHIFT+F10. This will bring up a command prompt window.

It’s here that all the magic will happen.

Formatting the hard disk using diskpart

Type the command diskpart (this and all commands below are followed by the Enter key).

Then type the command list disk.

The hard disks in your machine will be listed by number. The example above has two disks.

Now type the following commands, each followed by Enter.

• select disk 0
• clean
• convert gpt
• create partition efi size=500
• format fs=fat32
• create partition primary
• format fs=ntfs quick

This sequence of commands:

• Removes all existing partitions.
• Ensures that the disk is of type GPT (as opposed to MBR).
• Creates an EFI partition (used in the UEFI boot process) and formats it as FAT32.
• Creates a primary partition, formatted as NTFS, on the rest of the disk.

Next, we need to assign our new partition a drive letter.

Still in diskpart, enter the command list volume.

First, take note of which drive letter your installation media has been assigned. You’ll do this by looking for the label and/or type. While yours may be different, in the example above my installation media, a DVD, is drive E:.

Also note that there’s a volume with no label formatted as NTFS and 126GB in size. Yours will be close to the size of your hard disk. That’s the volume we want to install on. It’s also the volume we want to call “C:”. Note the volume number assigned to it. In my example above, it’s volume 2.

Now enter the following sequence of commands.

• select volume 2 (where 2 is the volume # you identified above)
• assign letter=c
• list volume

The resulting list now shows the drive with the assigned letter C.

You can now type exit to exit diskpart.

Now, with all the partitions ready, we can install Windows.

Installing Windows using DISM

Still in the command prompt, run the following command.

dism /Apply-Image /ImageFile:”E:\Sources\install.wim” /Index:1 /ApplyDir:C:\ /CheckIntegrity

Take note that the “ImageFile” parameter uses the drive we identified as being the installation media above. If your installation media appears on a different drive letter, use that instead.

As you might infer from some of the command line options, DISM applies the Windows image stored in “install.wim” onto your C: drive. This is a large file and will take some time.

Finally, run these two commands.

• mountvol z: /S
• BCDBOOT C:\windows /s Z: /F UEFI

This configures the boot information on the disk.

And now we use it by rebooting. I believe CTRL+ALT+DEL may work, but it’s also completely safe to just turn the machine off at this point. We don’t want the Windows Setup program (which has been hiding behind the command prompt the entire time) to do anything, so a forced shutdown accomplishes that.

Reboot into Windows 11

Booting into Windows 11 may take a long time depending on how many updates are available and what other configuration work is necessary. My feeling is that using this approach results in a longer initial boot than had we used Windows Setup normally.

When presented, complete the post-boot Windows 11 setup.

The result? Windows 11.

It’s running without a TPM. We can confirm that by typing +R and running tpm.msc, the Trusted Platform Module manager.

The “required” TPM is nowhere to be found.

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