Full Windows 10 on Raspberry Pi 3!

[Deozaan]

I came across this tweet thread saying full Windows 10 on Raspberry Pi is possible, linking to this Github repository for instructions and details on how to do it.

I've got a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ not doing anything worthwhile, so I decided to give it a try. My first attempt was unsuccessful. I'm making another attempt as I write this, but decided to post about it here in case anyone else would be interested and maybe we could help each other get a working install.

In my first attempt, I tried Windows 10 Pro 18237 image and the 1.2 Core Package. After deploying to the SD card I plugged it in and attempted to boot up. Eventually it just got stuck in a BSOD boot-loop. The stop code is DRIVER_UNLOADED_WITHOUT_CANCELLING_PENDING_OPERATIONS.

In my second attempt, I'm using the same image but trying the 1.0 Core Package. If there's any interest, I'll report back on things later.

[mouser]

Fun! Keep us informed, I'm curious to hear how the experiment progresses..

[Target]

following...

[Deozaan]

My second attempt is going better... sort of.

I actually made it to a setup screen. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be any power/data to the USB ports. So the USB keyboards and mice I've tried plugging in are not responding, or even receiving power.

[Deozaan]

I asked around in the Telegram group and it seems the USB drivers are currently broken or unavailable. But a stable driver is going to be released soon, "most likely this week" so I guess things are on hold until that point.

[Deozaan]

The latest update on the driver is quoted below:

• We sorted out MCCI release engienering’s build problems and we successfully built drivers on a clean system. (Lots of minor issues, but most important, we found that I’d forgotten to update the “packing list” that tells the automation the files that are part of the source tree. This is why we insist on doing release builds rather than releasing from developer sandboxes.)
• Next step (maybe later today) is to put the drivers into a known-good SD card image in place of the ones that I did in Boston, and make sure the system boots up.
• Logistics: license agreement has been dug out of our files, needs minor revisions, but should be easy. These drivers will be free for non-commercial use.

With luck, we might get through all the release gates by tomorrow evening

[Deozaan]

The USB drivers have been released within the past several hours. But the documentation and/or tools haven't been updated yet with instructions on how to include them when flashing the image to the SD card.

It seems folks in the Telegram group are scrambling to get things to work. And there have been a couple reports there that USB devices (including the on-board ethernet) are working.

Shouldn't be too long, now.

[Deozaan]

I poked around a bit and put the driver files somewhere that seemed appropriate. Then I got the image flashed to the SD card.

I'm still waiting for the initial boot into Windows 10 to complete (or get to the setup) but I decided to plug in a USB keyboard just to see if there was any response. I'm pleased to report that we have signs of life! Pressing Caps Lock or Num Lock toggles the appropriate LED on the keyboard.

But it's getting late and I heard it can get stuck on the "getting ready" screen for 20+ minutes (it just got there as I was typing this). So I think I'll just leave the Pi running overnight and check on it in the morning.

[Deozaan]

Yet another update: My earlier attempt(s) didn't work. I got BSODs or other lockups, or the USB device(s) stopped responding when I got into the setup. But it seems I was using a version of Windows which has since been confirmed not working.

I'm now flashing the image using a known-working version of Windows (17134) using the latest Core Package (1.3.0) which includes the USB drivers and latest UEFI files needed for things to work.

If all goes well I should have a working full Windows 10 installation on my Raspberry Pi 3B+ within about an hour or so.




(famous last words...)

[Deozaan]

It works!

I haven't tested anything yet. I don't have a mouse connected. But it just booted into the OS after I completed the initial setup using only the keyboard. And it works!

[tomos]

It works!

I haven't tested anything yet. I don't have a mouse connected. But it just booted into the OS after I completed the initial setup using only the keyboard. And it works!

well done :-)

[Deozaan]

well done :-)

Thanks!

I got a mouse connected and played around with some of the settings. There's no driver for the built-in WiFi chip, and I didn't find this guide with instructions on how to pre-configure the ethernet port to work until after I started flashing the image (which took 40-50 minutes), but I did manage to transfer the drivers onto the device using a thumb drive and got ethernet connected now.

Interestingly Windows activated itself automatically even though I didn't enter a license key or anything like that. I'm now attempting to download Windows Updates and we'll see if that will even work. It would be interesting to see if it will update from the version I installed (1803 build 17134.1) to a more recent version (1809) and still work properly. But I think that might not be possible in my current setup, since I used a 16GB microSD card for the installation and there's only 4GB of free space left.

And there's no GPU acceleration, so everything is fairly sluggish. Even so, it's kind of amusing to see running. There's something satisfying and amusing about getting something to run on hardware it was never really meant to run on.

[Deozaan]

I've been playing around with it a bit more. It's really too sluggish to be worthwhile for anything other than the novelty at this point. Maybe speeds will improve as better drivers are released for faster access to the SD card or possible GPU acceleration.

As I previously wondered, I ran into some problems trying to install updates because I ran out of space on the SD card. So Windows 10 prompted me to free up some space by visiting the Storage section of Settings, and that's where I encountered something really strange.

Somehow the OS thinks the drive is 32GB when it is only 16GB...



All that said, it was an interesting experiment and a fun diversion but I think I'm probably done with it (for now) because it is too sluggish to be usable compared to just running Raspbian or similar on the Pi.

[Ath]

Maybe speeds will improve as better drivers are released for faster access to the SD card or possible GPU acceleration.

Well, after I tried one of the first IoT releases of Windows, specifically made for the RPi, I found it to be so dreadfully slow that I gave up on it. So while I appreciate your efforts, I'm not inclined to even try to get it working. And about the anticipated speed improvements: Keep on dreaming hoping

[Deozaan]

Yeah, I don't really have much hope or expectation that things will be vastly improved on the RPi 3B+.

I think the important thing is that (full) Windows 10 runs on ARM64 hardware. So while it may never be that it runs well on the RPi 3B+, it may be that other, more powerful devices, such as something from Odroid, can run it more smoothly. Or maybe some future hardware that hasn't been released yet.

[Ath]

Well, MS has been working on an ARM version of Windows since Windows-RT, and we all saw how successful that was... not.