Microsoft has not managed, until now, for Windows to find its place as a relevant proposal in the ARM world. The Redmond company tried it more than a decade ago with Windows RT, but this system ended up dying shortly after its launch. Windows 10 for ARM later arrived, although it did not achieve the expected success, possibly due to its wide variety of limitations.
The Redmond company has found in the new Copilot+ PCs an opportunity to give the boost that Windows 11 for ARM needed. But betting on this architecture was still problematic in some aspects: something as simple as accessing an ISO of the system to perform an installation from scratch was not possible. It took a while, but finally this is no longer a problem.
Say ‘Hello’ to the Windows 11 ISO image for ARM
As we say, until now it has not been possible to obtain an ISO image of Windows 11 for ARM. This possibility was limited to members of the Windows Insider Program, who had the possibility of downloading preliminary versions of the system. Virtualization alternatives for ARM such as VMware Fusion 13 Pro were responsible for managing the download of the operating system internally.
From now on, in addition to the aforementioned options, we can download Windows 11 from Microsoft’s own website. Accessing it is as simple as selecting the corresponding version and clicking ‘Download now. What we will obtain will be an ISO file that we can use to create an installation media (USB drive or DVD), as well as to mount it in a virtualization program.
If you have a Windows 11 for ARM compatible device you can now perform a clean installation just as you would with an x86 version of Windows. This includes all Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X Plus and Elite processors. In any case, before making any move of this type, it is necessary to verify compatibility, have the necessary drivers and make a backup copy.
It should be noted that installing Windows 11 for ARM on devices with older versions of Snapdragon may require drivers to be added to the image. This is a task with a certain complexity. Microsoft has an article on its Learn page that explains step by step how to do this.
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