Tag: Windows 11

Oct252022October 25, 2022October 25, 20220Commentby Thomas Maurer
Reinstall Windows 11 from the cloud

Reset and Reinstall Windows 11 from the Cloud

Posted in Microsoft, Windows

In Windows 11 you have a new feature called Windows 11 Cloud Reset. This new feature helps you to reset and reinstall your Windows 11 machine from the cloud. If you wanted to reset or reinstall your Windows 11 machine, you already had the option of doing that from your local installed copy of Windows 11 and reusing existing Windows files to construct a fresh copy. Or if you wanted a completely fresh installation of your Windows machine, you needed to download Windows and create a USB stick to boot from. The new Cloud download option in the Windows 11 recovery settings allows you to get the best of both worlds.

Reset and reinstall Windows 11 using the cloud download feature ☁

The new Windows cloud download feature allows you to reinstall Windows 11 using fresh Windows installation files from the cloud. There is no need for a recovery partition or create a USB drive.

Brandon LeBlanc from the Windows team wrote about the benefits of using cloud download for the reset or fresh installation:

  • A more reliable way to reinstall Windows ✅
  • Depending on your internet speed it can be faster ✅
  • No need for a USB stick or DVD ✅

There are two options to reset from the cloud. First, if you have a running copy of Windows 10 and you want to do a fresh installation, you can use recovery.

How to reset your Windows 11 PC from the cloud in the recovery settings 💻

Reset and Reinstall Windows 11 using Cloud download
Reset and Reinstall Windows 11 using Cloud download

If you currently have a running Windows 11 machine and you want to initiate a reset or reinstallation from with the cloud download option, you can do this through the Windows settings.

  • Open Settings
  • Go to System
  • Click on Recovery
  • On the recovery screen, select Reset PC
  • Choose between Keep my files or Remove everything
  • Now you can select Cloud download or Local reinstallation
  • If you select Cloud download, this will use Windows Update to download the fresh Windows files

How to reinstall Windows 11 from the cloud if you can’t boot 💻

Windows RE recovery cloud download
Windows RE recovery cloud download

In the case that you are not able to boot your Windows 11 machine anymore, you can start your reinstallation using cloud download from Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE).

  • Click on Troubleshoot
  • Click on Reset this PC
  • Choose between Keep my files or Remove everything
  • Now you can select Cloud download or Local reinstallation
  • This will need drivers for the network adapter in the Windows RE image. Most of the time you have drivers for the wired connection. It might also work with wireless network connection depending on the drivers loaded by the PC vendor in the Windows RE image.

Conclusion

Cloud download is a great new option to reset and reinstall your Windows 11 computer and get it back to a healthy and fresh installation. This is just another great new feature in Windows like other improvements we have seen over the last couple of years.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment and use the Feedback Hub.


Oct152021October 15, 2021October 15, 20212Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Install Sysinternals from the Microsoft Store

Install Sysinternals from the Microsoft Store

Posted in Microsoft, Windows

Yesterday at [email protected] special event for the birthday of the Sysinternals Suite, Mark Russinovich (Technical Fellow, CTO Microsoft Azure, and creator of the Sysinternals tools) announced not only Sysmon for Linux but also the Sysinternals Suite is now available in the Microsoft Store and Windows Package Manager (Winget).

So you can now get and install the Sysinternals Suite from the Microsoft Store.

Install Sysinternals from the Microsoft Store
Install Sysinternals from the Microsoft Store

With Windows 10 and Windows 11, you can also use the Windows Package Manager (winget) by running the following command, to install the Sysinternals Suite from the command line.

winget install sysinternals
winget install sysinternals
winget install sysinternals

If you want to learn more about the Sysinternals check out the official website where you can learn more. And check out the following links:


Sep092021September 9, 2021September 8, 20211Commentby Thomas Maurer
Hyper-V Nested virtualization for AMD processors Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022

Hyper-V Nested virtualization for AMD processors

Posted in Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Windows, Windows Server

Windows Server 2022 just became generally available last week with a ton of great improvements in security, hybrid cloud management, and application platform. Another new feature supported with Windows Server 2022 is Hyper-V Nested virtualization for AMD processors. Nested Virtualization isn’t something new, in fact, it was introduced with Windows Server 2016 and the Windows 10 Anniversary update but only supported with Intel CPUs. With Windows Server 2022 and upcoming Windows 11, people can use Hyper-V Nested Virtualization with AMD CPUs.

Back in June 2020, Chris Huybregts shared more about AMD Nested Virtualization support.

What is Hyper-V Nested Virtualization

Nested virtualization is a feature that allows you to run Hyper-V inside of a Hyper-V virtual machine (VM). This is helpful for running the Android Emulator in a virtual machine, provide Azure users flexibility in how they want to set up their environments, run Hyper-V Containers inside a virtual machine, or testing configurations that ordinarily require several hosts.

Hyper-V Nested Virtualization Diagram (Source Microsoft Docs)

This means Hyper-V Nested Virtualization now works with Intel and AMD processors to enable the following scenarios:

  • Run Hyper-V in a Hyper-V for testing configurations and different applications scenarios. This is perfect for IT Pros and developers if they need a lab environment.
  • Provides Azure users flexebility on how they set up their environment.
  • Developers and IT Pros can run Hyper-V Containers inside a virtual machine
  • and more

How to set up Hyper-V Nested Virtualization

To set up a Hyper-V host nested inside a Hyper-V virtual machine you can just simply follow these steps:

Set-VMProcessor Hyper-V VM
Set-VMProcessor Hyper-V VM
  1. Create a virtual machine on Hyper-V with the reuqired operating system and VM version for the Hyper-V host and the virtual machine.
  2. After the VM is installed turn off the VM.
  3. Run the following command on the base Hyper-V host to enable nested virtualization for the VM.
    Set-VMProcessor -VMName -ExposeVirtualizationExtensions $true
  4. Start the virtual machine and install the Hyper-V role inside the Hyper-V VM.

Now you can run a Hyper-V VM inside a Hyper-V VM.

Hyper-V Nested virtualization for AMD processors Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022
Hyper-V Nested virtualization for AMD processors Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022

If you don’t run the command, you will get the following error when you try to install Hyper-V.

Hyper-V cannot be installed The processor does not have required virtualization capabilities
Hyper-V cannot be installed The processor does not have the required virtualization capabilities

You can find the full documentation here on Microsoft Docs or also follow my guide on how to set up Nested Virtualization in Microsoft Azure.

Conclusion

I hope this blog post was helpful and if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below.


Jul062021July 6, 2021July 5, 20210Commentby Thomas Maurer
Windows Package Manager WinGet CLI

Getting started with Windows Package Manager WinGet

Posted in Microsoft, PowerShell, Windows

In this blog post I want to quickly share how you can get started with the new Windows Package Manager and the WinGet CLI. At the Microsoft Build conference 2021, the team announced Windows Package Manager (WinGet) 1.0. The Windows Package Manager was first announced in 2020 as a preview for Windows Insiders. Windows Package Manager is a package manager solution that consists of a command-line tool (winget) and set of services for installing applications on Windows 10. You can use the winget command-line tool to discover, install, upgrade, remove and configure a curated set of applications.

Getting started with Windows Package Manager and WinGet

The Windows Package Manager is distributed with the App Installer from the Microsoft Store. You can also download and install the Windows Package Manager from our GitHub releases page or just directly install the latest available version. Version 1.0 of Windows Package Manager will soon ship as an automatic update via the Microsoft Store for all devices running Windows 10, version 1809 and later. It is also part of the latest Windows 11 preview builds!

To find out more about how to install the Windows Package Manager WinGet, check out my blog post. After it is installed and available on your machine, you can start using it.

Search Application to Install

To search for applications you can simply type the following command

winget search <applicationname>

For example:

winget search vscode

Search Application to install
Search Application to install

This will show applications from the winget repository. You can also enable the preview feature to use the Windows Store as a source for Winget.

You can find more information about searching applications on Microsoft Docs.

Install an application using WinGet

To install an application on Windows using the Windows Package Manager you can write the following command:

winget install <applicationname>

For example:

winget install vscode-insiders

You can also use the -h or –silent options to silent mode. This suppresses all UI and the default experience shows installer progress.

winget install vscode-insiders -h

This will install applications from the winget repository. You can also enable the preview feature to use the Windows Store as a source for Winget.

Install an application using Windows Package Manager WinGet
Install an application using Windows Package Manager WinGet

You can find more information about installing applications on Microsoft Docs.

List installed applications

You can also list all the existing applications installed on your machine using the list command.

winget list

You can also look for a spesifc application using:

winget list --name azure

In addition to the install version, the command also lists if there is an update available for the application.

List installed applications on Windows
List installed applications on Windows

You can find more information about listing applications on Microsoft Docs.

Uninstall an application using WinGet

Of course you can also uninstall applications using the uninstall command.

winget uninstall --name "Azure CLI"

It can also uninstall applications, which were not installed using the Windows Package Manager.

You can find more information about uninstalling applications on Microsoft Docs.

Update and Upgrade Applications using WinGet

One of the most important functionalities of a package manager is not just to install new applications but also keep them up-to-date. With the upgrade command you can not only see the applications where an update is available, but also where upgrade them. This also includes applications which were not installed using winget in the past.

To list all the applications with available updates you can run the following command:

winget upgrade

Update and Upgrade Applications using WinGet
Update and Upgrade Applications using WinGet

To update a specific application you can run:

winget upgrade --id Microsoft.AzureCLI

To update all applications on your machine with available updates using Windows Package Manager, you can use the following winget command:

winget upgrade --all

You can find more information about update and upgrades of applications on Microsoft Docs.

Export and Import Application list to another machine

If you have multiple machine or if you are reinstalling your computer, you can also make an export of all the applications installed on the existing machine. You can then import that file on the new or reinstalled computer, and winget will batch install all the applications.

winget export -o .\myapps.json

When the Windows Package Manager exports the JSON file, it attempts to export all the applications installed on the PC. If the winget export command is not able to match an application to an application from an available source, the export command will show a warning.

To import the list of applications on the new machine, you can run the following command:

winget import -i .\myapps.json

You can find more information about export and import of application lists on Microsoft Docs.

Additional Windows Package Manager and Winget settings

With the winget settings command you can open up the JSON setting file, where you can customize the Windows Package Manager client experience.

winget settings

A couple of settings you can change in version 1.0 and higher:

  • Auto Update Interval
  • Visual design of the progress bar
  • The install behavior including the scope, locale, and more
  • more..

To find more options and settings check out Microsoft Docs.

Repositories

You can find over 1400 unique packages in the Microsoft community repository. And if you want to add packages to the repository can check out the following docs and the Windows Package Manager Manifest Creator. This tool will help you to create a valid manifest you can the commit to the GitHub repo.

If you are looking forward to host private repositories there is also a reference implementation for the REST API source  which allows you to host your own private repository.

Conclusion

The Windows Package Manager (winget) is a fantastic tool you can use to manage and install software on your Windows 10 and Windows 11 machine. If you have any questions or you have some cool features to add to the blog, please let me know in the comments.


  • About Thomas Maurer

    Thomas Maurer

    My name is Thomas Maurer. I am a Senior Program Manager & Chief Evangelist for Azure Hybrid at Microsoft. I am part of the Azure engineering team (Cloud + AI) and engage with the community and customers around the world. Opinions are my own.

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