Recently, I had the task to install Windows 11 on a brand new HP laptop. It had only FreeDos installed. Having a laptop without Linux or Windows operating system is handy, after the purchase, one can choose from various operating systems afterwards.

Preparing the installation media:

  • First, Rufus needed to be installed.
  • The Windows 11 ISO image can be downloaded from the Microsoft web page.
  • With Rufus, I prepared the USB flash drive. The use of a Microsoft account can be deactivated and the username can be defined already.
  • The files from the ISO image will then be copied to the USB drive and it is bootable afterwards.

Then, I started my odyssey:

  • In the BIOS of the HP laptop (press F10 during startup ), the USB drive must be prioritized in the boot order
  • After the reboot, the laptop boots the Windows 11 installation procedure from the flash drive. Take care when choosing the partition for the Windows installation - it is usually the largest one. The other partitions are occupied with FreeDos and some HP tools.
  • Starting over was not successful, one needs to enter the repair mode of the Windows 11 installation, or you can press Shift+F10 to enter a command line. Then diskpart must be executed to check if there is an EFI partition.
    • list disk
    • select disk 0 (select the correct number in case multiple hard disks are installed)
    • online disk (if the partition with the Windows installation is offline).
  • Since there was no EFI partition, I needed to do the following in diskpart:
    • select disk 0
    • list partition
    • select partition # // # is the number of the Windows partition
    • shrink desired=500
    • create partition efi
    • format fs=fat32 quick
    • assign letter=Y​
  • Unfortunately, the command bcdboot X:\windows /s Y: did not work and gave errors.
  • After another reboot, one is stranded in the command line of the grub boot loader grub-cli, and Windows can be started as follows:
    • insmod part_gpt
    • insmod chain
    • set root=(hd0,gpt1) // gpt1 is the Partition, where grub is installed
    • chainloader /efi/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
    • boot
  • Windows 11 properly starts and the setup can be finalized. But one gets stuck in the grub-cli over and over.
  • The final problem must be solved with Windows tools in the repair console of the Windows 11 installer:
    • fixmbr
    • fixboot
    • chkdsk sfc /scanow
  • Afterwards, Windows 11 is starting and can be activated with a license key.

I have used a combination of insights from the following sources to solve my problem: