how to install windows 11 on surface pro 7

So I hit up the Volume License Servicing Center, download myself a copy of Windows 11 Enterprise for ARM, mount it on the Surface, and run through the setup program. Bah! I'm an engineer, I don't answer to you, Microsoft! I'll get Windows 11 on this thing myself! It just says 'We'll let you know when it's ready'. First it goes to Windows 10 21H1, and then it says 'Your device can run Windows 11', but doesn't give me a choice to actually perform the upgrade. While I'm doing the upgrades, I go ahead and get it imported into Autopilot. No biggie, I'll just sysprep this thing and log into it normally and then do all the upgrades and whatnot.

It boots into a fairly old version of Windows 10 (I think maybe 1903), and I didn't notice until after I had it in Audit Mode that it was using Windows 10 Home. I check this thing out of inventory, and start it up. Windows on ARM provisioned via Autopilot and managed by Intune is something that I believed should work, but I had never tried it before. Since I'm the endpoint guy, and we're doing the whole 'cloud-native Autopilot/Azure AD/Intune' thing for Windows devices, I thought this would be a very interesting challenge for me. It's full Windows, just compiled for ARM instead of x86. Now, as some of you might already know, the Surface Pro X is an ARM-based Windows tablet. The interesting thing, though, is that it hadn't been opened yet, which tells me that whatever the plan was for it didn't end up happening. Chances are, it was for some specific one-off use and then shelved and never bothered with again. Recently, I stumbled across an unopened box for a Surface Pro X in our inventory, and nobody knew what it was for.

After all, part of being good at managing endpoints is developing a good understanding of them through direct experience. At some point or another, I've gotten to play with all of these kinds of devices, just to see how they work. Of course, you've got your iPads, iPhones, macOS devices, Windows devices, and even some Androids too! Your Macs might be based on x86 or ARM, your Windows PCs will almost always be based on x86, and your mobile devices (tablets and phones) are pretty much all based on ARM. I must warn you, here be dragons.Īs the endpoint guy, I get to play with a lot of different devices. Honestly, I think a better title for this article might have been 'The most advanced bit of black magic fuckery I've ever done to get an operating system to work'. Prepare yourselves for the tale of the most absurd journey I've ever undertaken to get an endpoint to work.

How to install windows 11 on surface pro 7