Quickstart: Prepare your lab environment

• Applies to:

  ✅ Windows 11, ✅ Windows 10

In this quickstart, you prepare the technician PC to then install a basic Windows IoT Enterprise image onto a reference device sample. At the end of this quickstart, you have a technician PC ready to start building Windows IoT Enterprise images, and a reference device sample with Windows IoT Enterprise installed.

The lab environment created during this exercise is used in the successor quickstarts:

• Quickstart: Customize a reference device in Audit mode
• Quickstart: Sysprep and capture the reference device image, and deploy to a new device.

In this series of quickstarts, you can opt by using a Virtual Machine as your reference device sample. In a true development or production environment, you would start by choosing a Physical Device that meets the Minimum System Requirements for Windows IoT Enterprise.

Tip

You can also use the lab environment created during this exercise, to complete other tutorials under Customization, Optimization and Deployment.

Prerequisites

To prepare your technician PC (your work PC), you need:

• Windows 11 with the latest updates.
• Have at least 15 GB of free space for installing the software and for modifying Windows IoT Enterprise images.
• Have Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) with Deployment Tools, Configuration Designer, and the Windows PE add-on installed.
• Have a Windows 11 IoT Enterprise Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) 2024 ISO.

  Note

  Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024 is now available for OEMs building new devices, enterprise customers upgrading existing system through volume licensing. and evaluation.

  • If you are an OEM, contact your authorized Windows IoT Distributor for assistance with Licensing.
  • If you are an enterprise customer looking to upgrade fixed function devices through volume licensing, see Windows Desktop Operating System Volume Licensing Terms and Windows IoT Enterprise LTSC in Volume License for deployment guidance.
  • To evaluate Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024, download the 90-Day Evaluation.
  • If you have a Visual Studio Subscription, and Windows IoT Enterprise is available with your subscription, you can download previous versions of Windows IoT Enterprise LTSC from Visual Studio Subscriptions - Downloads.

To prepare your reference device sample, you need:

Physical Device

• A physical device that meets the Minimum System Requirements for Windows IoT Enterprise.
• An external keyboard, mouse, and a monitor (depending on the device).
• A USB key that's at least 8 GB in size and that can have all information removed from it.

Create a bootable Windows IoT Enterprise installation media

The typical way to install Windows in a physical device is to create a bootable USB flash drive, and then copy the Windows installation files onto the flash drive. Once you have the files on the flash drive, you can insert it into the device and boot from the flash drive. To learn more, see Install Windows from a USB flash drive.

Follow these steps to prepare the installation flash drive:

1. Insert a flash drive into your Technician PC.

2. Open Command Prompt with Administrator privileges and run diskpart:

   diskpart
   

3. Use diskpart to list the disks so you can identify the flash drive:

   list disk
   

   You should see something like:

   Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
   --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
   Disk 0    Online          238  GB     0 B        *
   Disk 1    Online          8192 MB     0 B      
   

   In this example, Disk 1 is our flash drive, because the size represents the size of the flash drive that we're using.

4. When you identify the disk number of your flash drive, use diskpart to prepare the drive so you can use it as a bootable installation drive:

   Warning

   The following commands will erase everything on the flash drive.

   Enter the following commands from within diskpart, where Disk 1 is the flash drive:

   Select disk 1
   clean
   create partition primary
   select partition 1
   active
   Format fs=fat32 quick
   assign
   exit
   

5. Mount the Windows IoT Enterprise ISO on your Technician PC by double clicking the ISO and copy the entire contents onto the root of the flash drive. You can use File explorer to manually copy the files.

Boot the device to Windows Setup:

1. Move the USB flash drive from the technician PC to the powered down physical device.
2. Turn on your physical device and enter the device's boot menu. Your device has a specific button combination or keyboard key to press to get to the boot menu. You might need to consult your hardware documentation if you aren't familiar with how to get to your device's boot menu.
3. From the boot menu, select the flash drive to boot from. Your device boots from the flash drive and enter into the Windows Setup.

Virtual Machine

• A virtual machine that meets the Minimum System Requirements for Windows IoT Enterprise.

  Important

  This series of quickstarts focuses on using Hyper-V with Windows 11. First, confirm that you can install Hyper-V on your technician PC. If Hyper-V is not suitable for your setup, consider using alternative virtualization technologies.

A virtual machine booting to Windows IoT Enterprise ISO

Create the Virtual Machine in Hyper-V:

1. Open Hyper-V Manager.
2. In the Hyper-V Manager, select New in the Actions pane, then select Virtual Machine.
3. Follow the wizard to create a new virtual machine.
4. When prompted to specify the generation, choose Generation 1 or Generation 2 based on your requirements.
5. Assign a minimum of 2 GB of memory to the virtual machine.
6. Leave the virtual machine with no connection to the network.
7. When you reach the Connect Virtual Hard Disk step, select Create a virtual hard disk.
8. Specify the name, location, and size of the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD). For example, set the size to 64 GB.
9. In the Installation Options step, select Install an operating system from a bootable CD/DVD-ROM.
10. Choose Image file (.iso) and browse to the location of your Windows IoT Enterprise ISO file.
11. Review the settings in the Summary step and select Finish to create the virtual machine.

Configure the Number of Processors:

1. After the virtual machine is created, right-click on it in the Hyper-V Manager and select Settings.
2. In the left pane, select Processor.
3. In the right pane, specify a minimum of two virtual processors.

Start the Virtual Machine:

1. In the Hyper-V Manager, right-click on the Virtual Machine and select Connect.
2. Select Start to power on the virtual machine.
3. Your device boots from the CD/DVD-ROM ISO and enter into the Windows Setup.

Install Windows IoT Enterprise on your reference device sample

This section covers how to install Windows IoT Enterprise on your reference device sample using Windows Setup. The steps apply to both physical device and virtual machine.

Tip

We recommend not having your device connected to any network during Windows Setup. Network connectivity could cause it to come out of the deferred activation state.

Install Windows with Windows Setup:

1. Step through the Windows Setup menus, providing the requested information. Choose the settings, such as language, time and currency, and keyboard options that apply to your device and proceed to the next screen.

2. Select Install Windows 11.

3. On the Activate Windows screen, insert a valid product key. This screen doesn't show if you're using an evaluation or volume license edition.

4. On the Applicable notices and license terms screen, select Accept if you agree with the terms.

5. On the Select location to install Windows 11 screen, if the device has existing partitions, we recommend deleting the partitions so you have a single block on unallocated space to start from, then select Next to start the installation.

6. Your device restarts a couple of times during the operating system installation. Wait until the device enters Out Of Box Experience (OOBE) and is showing a screen that says Is this the right country or region?.

   Important

   When at the Is this the right country or region? OOBE screen don't continue the setup as you will need to enter Audit mode at this point. In the event that you started the setup of an account by mistake, you can open Command Prompt with Administrator privileges and run C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\sysprep.exe /audit to enter Audit mode and continue the steps.

   

Enter Audit Mode

Windows is installed on your reference device sample and you have a basic image that's ready to be customized in Audit mode.

1. From the first OOBE screen that says Is this the right country or region?, use the Ctrl+Shift+F3 combination on your keyboard to enter Audit mode.

2. Your device should restart in Audit mode. You know you're in Audit mode when you see a System Preparation Tool window.

3. Every time you reboot the system you see the System Preparation Tool, also called Sysprep. Sysprep can be hidden behind the start screen, so you might need to minimize the start screen to see it. Select Cancel on the System Preparation Tool to close it.

   

   Tip

   If you're in Audit mode and a password-protected screen saver starts, you can't log back on to the system. The built-in administrator account that's used to log on to Audit mode is immediately disabled after logon. Disable the screen saver by either changing the power plan in the Settings app, or configure and deploy a custom plan. For more information, see Create a Custom Power Plan.

Next step

Quickstart: Customize a reference device in Audit mode