When installing a Microsoft Windows 11 Operating System in Proxmox, a few helpful hints here. This is with Proxmox v9.
Windows 11 can be downloaded from Microsoft Windows 11 Download. During the installation, you'll need a license key, so have that ready.
The RedHat Virtio drivers will be required during initial install.
When defining the configuration for the virtual machine in proxmox, attach the Win11 ISO, attach EUFI local, and provide a TPM area.
When starting from the ISO, hit a key to start. During the process of selecting and formatting the drive, you'll need to browse to the Virtio ISO, and browse into the \amd64\win11 sub-directory to load the initial storage sub-system drivers.
Later on in the process, the installation will request access to the network. Use shift-F10 to start a text console. In there, type:
oobe\bypassnro
The machine will reboot. This can be used to bypass making a Microsoft account and to create a local account instead.
Optionally:
- Once it returns, you need to disconnect networking. So you can do terminal again and ipconfig /release, or just set the NIC for disconnected.
- At some point it'll guilt you into creating an account but there will be an "I don't have internet" option, and that's your way out.
Inspiration from How to install Win11 in Proxmox | Quick guide | And fix problems of network search.
From Install Windows 11 22H2 , some other tricks:
- in the user box type "no@thankyou.com" and any password. It'll error out when trying to login and let you click next to create a local account. Dev bypass must be
- When connecting to the network, Press Win key + E to bring up an explorer window, install all the drivers needed off the driver ISO
- Windows 10 guest best practices
- Choose setup as work account + choose domain setup. The account it first creates is a local account. (I did this as of last week)
- oobe = out-of-box-experience
