When Microsoft officially launched the windows 11 iso to the public, it ‘was and still is’ not compatible with the VirtualBox, As Microsoft made sure TPM and the Secure boot are the important pre-requisites even for you to proceed with the installation. without which you cannot install windows 11 on VirtualBox. You will end up with the below error.
This PC Cant run windows 11.
oops, that’s not good..
Soon after, there was an update from Oracle that they are working on it to provide the TPM and secure-boot to the VirtualBox, however, that will be on version 7, and at the time of this writing, the latest version is 6.31 and it is still doesn’t have TPM and secure boot support.
Can we install the Windows 11 VirtualBox without TPM and secureBoot ?
There are alternate ways to still install Windows 11 on Virtualbox, and we are going to follow easy steps, which we will perform during the installation, and you will be able to install the windows 11 operating system successfully. I have been running official windows 11 on VirtualBox for quite some time now and it works great.
One of the reasons people prefer to use VirtualBox over other hypervisors is that it is free for anyone to use it. It doesn’t matter what host operating system you use, whether Windows, MAC, or Linux. The VirtualBox can be installed on it and run your favorite operating system in it. Moreover, it is open source too.
If in case you are using a VMware workstation on your machine and wanted to install windows 11 on it, you may check out the article here to learn more, because VMware workstation 16 supports TPM and Secure boot.
If you are using a Linux host, instead of using VirtualBox, I would recommend you to use KVM instead, and you can see here how you can install windows 11 on KVM step by step, you can enable TPM and secure boot on KVM as well.
If you are using Windows 10 on your physical machine and wanted to upgrade to Windows 11, you may do so by following the guide here.
So let’s go ahead and install windows 11 on VirtualBox hypervisor.
Prerequisites,
- Before you begin, you need to have VirtualBox downloaded and installed on your operating system.
- Windows 11 ISO image. Follow the article here on how to download the windows 11 iso image officially from Microsoft.
Steps to install Windows 11 on Oracle Virtualbox.
- Create the Windows11 Virtualbox VM.
- Configure the required memory and Hard disk.
- Configure the Windows 11 Virtual machine.
- Begin the Windows 11 installation in VirtualBox.
- Bypass TPM and SecureBoot in Windows11.
- Choose the Windows 11 edition.
- Windows 11 initial setup wizard.
- Install VirtualBox guest additions on windows11.
1. Create the Windows11 Virtualbox VM.
The Virtual machine creation wizard will now open, you have to modes to install the VM, either expert mode or guided mode. We are choosing the guided mode here.
- Enter the name of the VM- > Windows 11.
- Machine folder, if you would like to change the VM location based on your Storage, you may click on the down arrow key.
As you can see, when we typed the windows 11 name, the type and version by default picked up by the VirtualBox, click on Next.
2. Configure the required memory and Hard disk.
We are now going to configure the Memory and Hard disk for the virtual machine.
You may provide memory for the VM based on your requirements, It is recommended to have at least 4GB of RAM for Windows 11 to work fine. Since I have plenty of memory on my machine. I am giving 8GB of RAM.
Create virtual hard disk.
We will create the virtual hard disk for the VM, so choose to create a virtual hard disk now and click on Create.
Though I am creating this VM on VirtualBox, I need the flexibility to move this VM from VirtualBox to other hypervisors such as VMware workstations, or KVM, and so on in the future. So instead of choosing the VirtualBox default virtual hard disk format VDI, I am selecting the VMDK format and clicking on Next.
Choose dynamically allocated and click on Next.
You may enter the virtual hard disk capacity here. By default, VirtualBox picked up the 80GB of Storage, and I am okay to leave the default and click on Next.
In case you would like to increase or decrease the Storage, you may do so here, however, 80GB is recomended.
3. Configure the Windows 11 Virtual machine.
Let’s make some more changes before you proceed with the installation.
Change CPU cores.
By default Windows 11 picked up 2 CPUs during the VM creation. You can still run the VM with a dual CPU, since I have enough CPU cores I am going to give 4 Processors.
Right-click on the VM that we just created and click on settings.
And the settings, click on system and click on Processor.
Based on your requirement, you may increase the CPU, and I am giving 4 CPUs cos I have about 12 cores in my machine.
Attach windows 11 ISO.
We have downloaded the windows 11 iso already, however we have not attached that into the virtualbox.
Let’s attach the Windows 11 ISO image to the VirtualBox storage as CDROM.
In the same settings window, click on Storage, and under storage devices, click on the empty CD DRIVE, Under attributes, on the extreme right, click on the down arrow key under the CDROM and click on Choose a disk file.
And attach the windows11 iso image to the VirtualBox, and click on okay.
4. Begin the Windows 11 installation in VirtualBox.
We have now completed the windows 11 VM creation step in VirtualBox. We are now going to start the VM and proceed with the VM installation.
Select Windows 11 VM, click on start.
If you have configured everything as above, you will get the windows installation wizard after a few seconds.
Choose the Language, Time, and Keyboard layout based on your location and click on Next.
Click on Install now to start the windows 11 installation.
Since I am not using any product key now, I am choosing I don’t have a product key to proceed to the next step.
Choose the desired windows 11 version, and click on Next.
And you will end up with an error message. Let’s go ahead and fix that, click on the back button.
5. Bypass TPM and SecureBoot in Windows11.
To bypass the TPM and secure boot, you will have to make some changes to the registry.
Note: You need to follow exactly what is in the steps.
- While on the select operating system you want to install screen, you may press shift+f10 (you might need to press function key )
- A command prompt window will appear, you may type regedit and hit enter.
- In the Registry Editor, goto HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->SYSTEM->Setup
- Right click on Setup and click on New->Key.
- In the New Key field type Labconfig.
- Select Labconfig, right-click on the registry Value field->New->DWORD (32-bit) Value.
- Add below values.
BypassTPMCheckBypassSecureBootCheck
As you can see, two values are added.
- Right click on each value and click on Modify..
- Change the Value from 0 to 1
Once both the values changed to 1, you may close the registry window and the command prompt.
That’s it, we have told window 11 to bypass the TPM and the secure boot.
6. Choose the Windows 11 edition.
After selecting your desired windows 11 version, you may click on Next, if you have done everything perfectly in the previous steps you will no longer see the error message that you got before.
Accept the license agreement, and click on Next.
In the which type of installation, click on Custom.
You should see the Virtual hard disk that we have set up during the VM creation. Choose the hard disk and click on Next.
The windows 11 installation will now begin. This process will take some time to complete.
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7. Windows 11 initial setup wizard.
The Windows installation wizard will restart once the installation is completed.
After a few minutes, you will be taken to the Windows 11 initial setup wizard.
Choose the location and click on Next.
Next, you will be asked to choose the keyboard layout of your operating system, you may choose that and click on Next.
Disconnect the Windows 11 VM from the network.
Before you proceed with anything, let’s disconnect your VM from the network.
We are not connecting to the network because, during the installation, Windows will start checking for updates that will cause delays for the windows installation to complete. Also, you won’t get an option to create a local account either. We can later link the Microsoft account post the installation.
Click on I don’t have internet.
Click on Continue with limited setup.
Setup your windows 11 local account and set the security questions.
You will be asked to set up a local account on your Windows 11 machine. Enter your username and password, and you will need to set up your three security questions as well.
Choose Privacy settings for your device.
You may choose the settings you like since I will not use any of them, let me disable all, and I click on Accept.
After a few minutes, the installation will be completed, and you will be taken to the windows 11 desktop page.
Connect your Windows 11 VM to the internet.
Now the installation is completed, you may go ahead and connect the network adapter back.
Right-click on the network adapter icon on the bottom right of the Virtualbox windows and click on connect network adapter.
After few seconds, you should see the machine connected to the network.
8. Install VirtualBox guest additions on windows11.
We have now completed the installation of windows 11 on VirtualBox. To get better performance out from any VM running on VirtualBox, you need to install something called VirtualBox guest additions.
Click on Devices, and click on Insert Guest Additions CD image…
This step will mount the VirtualBox guest additions CD image to the Windows 11 machine.
To access the image, click on the folder icon at the bottom of the screen.
In the ‘This PC’ window, click on CD Drive on the left.
Doubleclick on Vboxwindows additions amd64 to install the VirtualBox guest additions.
After the installation, you will be asked to reboot the machine, choose Reboot Now, and click on Finish.
That’s it. You have now successfully installed windows 11 on a Virtualbox hypervisor bypassing the TPM and secure boot, that is the best way to install windows 11 on VirtualBox currently.