Andrew Heinzman
Installing Windows 10 on a Raspberry Pi SD card was impossible just one year ago. But after a ton of small milestones, there’s finally an easy way to get Windows 10 or Windows 11 on your Pi. A new script called WoR-Flasher does the job in a jiffy, opening the door to experimentation or app building for Windows on ARM.
WoR-Flasher downloads a Windows installation directly from Microsoft’s servers (so it’s perfectly legal) and flashes it to your SD card. The whole process happens within your Debian-based Linux distribution (the default Raspberry Pi OS works), so you don’t need a Windows PC to put Windows on your Raspberry Pi. You will need a USB drive that’s 8GB or larger to create the Windows install media, though.
Starting up the WoR-Flasher script takes just two terminal commands, and a handy GUI guides you through the Windows download and installation process. WoR-Flasher will give you the opportunity to adjust some startup conditions for your Windows install drive, which may be a good idea if you’re comfortable overclocking the Pi’s CPU or GPU—Windows is pretty demanding on a Pi computer!
Once WoR-Flasher starts downloading Windows files from Microsoft’s servers, it needs to convert them into an install ISO. You can copy this ISO to an SD card or, if you’re performance-minded, place it on a faster NVMe drive. Booting a Raspberry Pi from an NVMe SSD requires some tinkering, but it’s a much simpler process than you might expect.
Keep in mind that the Windows 10 or 11 installation process will take a while on a Raspberry Pi due to the computer’s underpowered CPU. But once it’s installed, your work is done. You can download WoR-Flasher from Botspot’s Github, where you’ll also find a full installation tutorial. I suggest performing this installation on a Raspberry Pi 4 (preferably one with 8GB of RAM), as other Pi computers are just too slow to handle Windows.
Source: Botspot via Ars Technica
