Sometimes you absolutely need Windows to run a piece of software. This page explains how to install and run Windows 11 IoT LTSC into QEMU in less than 30 minutes.

Windows 11 IoT LTSC

This is the best version of Windows so far as it contains no bloat and doesn’t require TPM. The catch is that Microsoft doesn’t want you to use it.

Nothing is perfect and here are the non-technical limitations (Microsoft is what it is…) so far:

  • You can’t officially buy a license for it.
  • Will only work for 90 days without beeing activated (then it’ll reboot every hour).
  • The online account creation also needs to by bypassed.

The ISO file can be downloaded from here.

Here is the way I used to bypass Microsoft Account dark pattern:

  • Start the terminal with SHIFT+F10 on the Region Settings page
  • Execute reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
  • Reboot with shutdown /r /t 0
  • Start the terminal with SHIFT+F10 on the Region Settings page.
  • Disconnect from network with ipconfig /release
  • Click on I don't have internet when it appears.

Bridge network

If you need to access internet or other network ressources, you’ll need a NAT-ed bridge.

In NetworkManager, create a bridge named bridge0 and select Share with other computers in the IPv4/IPv6 sections. Bring this connection up.

QEMU

Windows 11 IoT can be started in QEMU with following command (as no TPM is needed, the Windows 10 way works fine):

# Sudo is required for bridge nic
sudo qemu-system-x86_64 \
  -M q35,usb=on,acpi=on,hpet=off \
  -m 6G \
  -cpu host,hv_relaxed,hv_frequencies,hv_vpindex,hv_ipi,hv_tlbflush,hv_spinlocks=0x1fff,hv_synic,hv_runtime,hv_time,hv_stimer,hv_vapic \
  -smp cores=4 \
  -accel kvm \
  -drive file=win11.qcow2 \
  -device usb-tablet \
  -device VGA,vgamem_mb=256 \
  -monitor stdio \
  -nic bridge,model=e1000,br=bridge0

Steps for installation:

  • Create the disk QCOW image with qemu-img create -f qcow2 win11.qcow2 40G
  • Add the ISO image as cdrom to qemu command line -cdrom ~/Downloads/26100.1742.240906-0331.ge_release_svc_refresh_CLIENT_IOT_LTSC_EVAL_x64FRE_en-us.iso