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Paul Thurrott (1:59)

On Hands on Windows, Microsoft has released Windows 11 version 25H2 for everybody, but not everybody right away. So here's how you can get it right away.

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Paul Thurrott (2:22)

Hello everybody and welcome back to Hands on Windows. I'm Paul Thurat and this week we're going to talk about how you can get Windows 11 version 25H2, which is actually available in stable for everybody. As I noted in the promo, they're not necessarily for everyone and certainly not right away. So they've completed the development of the initial release of this operating system. They're rolling it out on their own schedule. If you go through the normal methods, you might not see it immediately. And so what we're going to talk about today is how you can make that happen if you want it to. And I think the most important thing to remember here is that from a functional perspective, look and feel, etc. Windows 11 version 25.2 H2 is identical to 24H2. There's the same thing. There's one number in the build number that's a little different. But as these things get updated side by side, and they will, they'll each get the same updates. So even if you're on 24H2, you don't actually have to do this, but you're watching the show, I think you want to do this. I certainly do. So let's take a look. The first thing to try, of course, is the traditional approach, which is to go into Windows Update and check to see if you have an update. So as I record this in early October, it's only been a couple of days since Microsoft announced this release. I don't have it. So it's not appearing. Sometimes you might actually see it under optional Updates you'll see Windows 11 comma version 25H2, but no. So I don't have that. That's okay because what I do have is the ability to get it in other ways. Right. So there's the traditional approach. And so if you Google or whatever search engine you're using, Download Windows 11, you will find this link very quickly. And this will probably be familiar to a lot of people. There's a lot of different options here, but you can create Windows 11 install media. If you're using an x86 based PC, you can download the ISO. And that's true if you're using x86 or x64 or ARM. Right. You can go to this other link here for ARM and then you can actually just double click on that and use that setup from there to do that. This is an installation assistant. I wouldn't rely on that personally. I did download this ISO and if I go to the download folder here, this is the ARM version. So I bet the X64 might be a little bigger, but it's about 7 gigabytes as you can see there. So that's certainly possible. That's the traditional route. The interesting thing though is that a couple of days or maybe a week or so before they released this, Microsoft made available quietly on their download servers. These are links to actual to a Microsoft server. They released the ISOs for Windows 11 version 25H2, but also something called the EKB. And that stands for entitlement package, it stands for enablement package. And the idea there is that this is a very minor update to 24H2. So if you're actually on the latest version of 24H2, you've gone to Windows Update, you're fully up to date, you can download this little file. And so I'm going to click on this here and see how this goes. But you can see it went pretty quick. It's. Or it's going. It's still going, but it's very small, 171 kilobytes. And I believe I also have that in my notes or in my. Somewhere in here, I think I have this. I just downloaded it, but you can just run this. I don't need to do this. It's already been installed. But it's super quick. You reboot once and then you're in. And so that's actually. That's actually pretty cool. If you do decide to download the ISO, if you do want to make your own install media, meaning you're going to create a Windows 1125H2 setup disk on a USB key, you can use the media tool that Microsoft has if you want. Like I said, I keep trying to go back to this folder. I keep closing for some reason, but I recommend using Rufus. And if you're on ARM 64, you're going to have to use Rufus because they don't actually make that available on ARM yet. So if you look at this tool, it's changed a little bit. I've already got a USB key in here. I can select the ISO and it will give me whatever options. Typically you don't have to change any of this, but when you stop, you get this additional window and some of this will be familiar. If you've seen this before, there were check options in here for removing some of the requirement blockers, you know, for Windows 11, I don't. I think we're at the point now where if you're trying to run Windows 11 on a system has 4 gigs of RAM or doesn't have secure booted TPM 2.0, we have to have a different conversation. But I don't really have a problem leaving those checked. It's okay. But there's new stuff in here, right? So creating a local account automatically, that's been there for a while. Regional options is kind of interesting. Disable data collection for skipping some of the Privacy stuff. Disable BitLocker, automatic device encryption. Very strongly recommend not doing that and not checking that box. And then this is related to a certificate authority that expired at some point and most people are not going to have to worry about that. But I've already done this, so I'm not going to make this thing here. Of course. But I do have a bonus tip. Okay, that's a good spot for a break. We'll be back in a minute, right after a message from a sponsor.