How to Create Installation Media and Install Windows 10X on a PC

Windows 10X is not going to be a successor or an alternative to the Windows 10 that we all have installed on our computers. This new system wants to be different, an optimized, lightweight operating system designed to use universal apps and PWAs. In addition, it is designed to work exclusively on certain types of devices (with ARM processors, touch screens, etc.), coming installed as standard in them. Microsoft will not allow us to download an ISO and install it on our computer. Although, luckily, nothing is impossible.

Windows 10X: what to know before installing it

The first thing to keep in mind is that it is an operating system designed for ARM devices, such as low-resource tablets or laptops. This system is roughly a “Mini” version of Windows 10, a system that, although it works, is limited in many ways.

Create Installation Media and Install Windows 10X on a PC

The first thing to keep in mind is that we will not be able to run conventional programs on it. This OS is only compatible with universal applications, which we can download from the Store, and with PWAs. Therefore, there is a lot of software, and most of the games, that we will not be able to use. It is an important limitation that we must take into account, since we can end up without being able to do anything.

Another important aspect to take into account is that we will not have official drivers for our hardware. Windows 10X is a system designed to be distributed as OEM , so it is the manufacturers who include the drivers, and we cannot download them from anywhere. There is a trick (which we are going to see in this article) with which we can extract the drivers from our Windows and add them by hand to our 10X image. It may work, although full functionality or error-free is not guaranteed.

In addition, we must meet the following requirements :

  • Using a version of Windows 10 “Iron” or “Cobalt”, preferably the latest Insider, although with 20H2 it should work.
  • USB memory of at least 8 GB.
  • Graphics card with DCHU drivers.
  • UEFI system with Secure Boot disabled.
  • More than 100 GB of hard disk space.
  • ADK and WinPE installed.

In addition, as it does not have an installer (the entire disk is flashed) we do not have the possibility to choose partitions, so the first fully connected hard disk will be used, erasing all the saved data.

Download the files for this operating system

In order to install this operating system, the first thing we need are the Windows 10X Unified Update Platform (UUP) packages . These are the base files for the operating system, which Microsoft does not provide directly. However, it is possible to download and compile them directly on our computer in various ways. We can Google them already compiled to save this work, or we can do it by hand.

We recommend you access this website , UUP Dump , a website where we will find the Unified Update Platform for all versions of the operating system. We choose the latest Windows 10X, download the package, unzip it, and run “uup_download_windows.cmd” to start the download. The program will take care of everything. If this script fails, Microsoft has removed the files from their servers, and we can only continue searching for the packages by hand.

We can also download these files by hand using the UUP Media Creator tool, which we can download for free from GitHub .

Once the download process is finished, we will have the Windows 10X packages on our computer, although at the moment they are not of much use. We will have to create a suitable version for our PC by adding the drivers as we will see in the next step.

Create Windows 10X Installation Media

Windows 10X does not have an ISO that we can record on a USB to install it on our PC. Nor does it have an installation wizard that works as such. Therefore, the process is somewhat longer and more complicated than starting a normal Windows 10. For this, we are going to use a tool called Device Image Generator . This tool, based on the Windows Full Flash Update , has been designed to allow us to join the installation files of the operating system (which we have obtained in the previous step) with the drivers that we have installed on our PC. In this way we will have a customized Windows 10X, with our drivers, that will work on an x86 computer. Of course, it is important that this wizard is carried out from the same PC where we are going to install Windows 10X, by the drivers. Otherwise, we must first extract the drivers from the target PC, and then use them when creating the image.

The first thing we must do is download the necessary tool to carry out this work from the following link . Once we have the tool on our computer, we execute it and we will see the three clearly differentiated steps.

Windows 10X - Device Image Generator 1

The first step will be to extract our drivers. To do this, we click on the option ” Export drivers from this PC ” and we will simply have to choose the folder where we are going to save them. We can choose to either compress them (if we want to save some space), or leave them uncompressed. When we have selected the destination path, we will mark ” Start export ” and wait for it to finish.

Windows 10X - Device Image Generator 2

We already have the drivers for our computer exported, but what we have to do now is tell the program how we want them to be used. And this brings us to the second step. To do this, we will click on the ” Create configuration packages ” section and it will take us to another window. In it, what we must do is select in the first box the path where we have saved the drivers in the previous step, and in the second box the destination folder where we want the configuration packages to be saved.

Windows 10X - Device Image Generator 3

We click on ” Process drivers ” and we will wait for the process to finish. We are done with the drivers. And this brings us to the third step, ” Build an image “. This is the step in which we will create our custom image based on the Windows 10X image that we downloaded and the driver configuration files from the previous step.

Windows 10X - Device Image Generator 4

We will choose the folder where we have the OS packages saved, the folder where we want the new image to be saved and the drivers folder, in that order. And, to finish, click on “Start Building”. We wait for the process to finish (which can take a long time) and that’s it. When finished, we will have our Windows 10X image ready to install and run on our PC.

Create installation USB and install Windows 10X

We already have everything we need to launch our custom Windows 10X. However, one of the most important steps still remains: creating the installation USB. By not having an ISO image we cannot use the programs that we often see, but we have to opt for a much more manual process.

In this link we can see, step by step, how to prepare the USB with diskpart to install this system and how to add the WinPE to load a Live system to proceed with the installation.

Differences between Windows 10 and 10X

Unlike Windows 10, the new Windows 10X is going to be a light and refreshed operating system. Microsoft has created this operating system almost from scratch, starting from the Windows Kernel and, from there, adding functions and eliminating everything considered useless or obsolete. For example, you have done away with the classic Windows file explorer, and with Lite Tiles, among other functions.

The start menu of this OS behaves more like an application launcher , in the style of Chrome OS. In it we can find a search engine, a list of installed apps (UWP apps, no Win32 apps) and access to recently opened files and documents. Each of the apps will have its updated and modern icon , with the possibility of adjusting the size of the elements, clearly designed for touch screens.

Of course, the control panel completely disappears from this operating system. Windows 10X centralizes all its configuration within the System Settings panel. From there we can customize the different elements of the interface and access all kinds of settings. We will even find the long -awaited anti-theft function , iPad style, which will prevent that, if the tablet is stolen, they can use it or reinstall the OS.

Unfortunately, the development of Windows 10X has been postponed indefinitely. Although, thanks to that, we may soon see some of the functions of this OS in our main Windows 10.