WARNING: This page is under construction, help us by adding useful steps, tips/tricks and troubleshooting steps. Thanks!
This document is a guide for installing Windows on ARM on supported Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM64 devices with Renegade Project EDK2 UEFI.
We don’t take any responsibility for any damage done to your device. By following this guide, you agree to take full responsibility of your actions.
PLEASE READ SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY!! BE SURE TO UNDERSTAND THE ENTIRE GUIDE BEFORE STARTING!! BE AWARE THAT SOME STEPS APPLY ONLY TO SOME SPECIFIC Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs!!
Don’t run all commands at once and don’t rerun the commands if you interrupt the process. You need to be familiar with command line interfaces beforehand and you must not commit any typo with any commands. You may permanently break your device!
If you see a warning and/or error during the process, it is not normal. Firstly check Troubleshooting. If you didn’t find your answer, hit us on Telegram or Discord, but do not continue or proceed on your own, you might break things further.
Please note that we don’t provide any support for YouTube tutorials since they are bound to get outdated quickly as the project moves on. Thanks for understanding.
In case of any questions or if you want interactive help, please ask on our Telegram or Discord, they are available in the Main Page.
You have been warned and you can now start with the installation process!
Check the Device Support Status if your device is supported!
Check if there is a device specific user guide for your device! Chances are that it could link you to entirely different guide (ex. Xiaomi Pad 5 or Poco X3 Pro) or say to not proceed further (ex. Xiaomi Civi)!
UUP Dump is currently recommended for regular users.
You can use Latest Dev Channel build to try out the latest features in Windows. For more stability, Latest Release Preview build is recommended.
Remember to check Include updates in Conversion options, this should give you the exact version of ISO.
As mentioned before, always check your device specific user guide as it can recommend a different versions for drivers and UEFI image!
edk2-msm Releases: Renegade Project EDK2 UEFI image
WOA-Drivers: Windows drivers for Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 devices
Please download zip files only from the releases page!
Downloading the whole
"repository source code"will leave you with a broken driver zip that will not work!
Let’s go further if you have all things needed.
dism++_eng.7z: used for installing drivers on Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 devices
Android platform-tools: adb, fastboot
You may also want to check out your device specific user guide again for files which might be useful for your device.
This procedure will wipe all your Android data!
You should always modify
userdatapartition in a Linux environment
Theoretically you can resize your userdata partition without data loss using
gpartedon a Linux PC. But you should be careful if your userdata is encrypted. Anyway, it’s always better to backup important data first.
To resize userdata, you will need a third-party recovery which allows you to use ADB. You will also need parted (optionally gdisk)
First boot your device into recovery, umount userdata partition using graphics interface, or by running umount /dev/block/by-name/userdata
(you need to decompress the 7z archive to get the files, like parted.7z -> parted)
Then push the tools to your device and enter ADB shell:
adb push parted /cache/
adb push gdisk /cache/
adb shell "chmod 755 /cache/parted /cache/gdisk"
adb shell
After entering ADB shell:
cd /cache
./parted /dev/block/sda
Print the current partition table:
(parted) print
Then you will see your current partition table with userdata being the last partition
Below is an example of output:
.........
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
.........
22 2048MB 122GB 120GB ext4 userdata
This diagram shows the current partition table in the example above, and what the partition table should look like for installing Windows.
Now let’s continue partitioning:
Here the size of userdata can be decided by yourself. In this guide we take 30G as the example.
(parted) resizepart 22
# 22 is the partition number for userdata
End? [122GB]? 32GB
32GB is the
Endvalue for the newuserdatapartition.
Since the starting point foruserdatais 2048MB = 2GB, the new size would be32G - 2G = 30G.
Then create the windows and esp partitions:
# esp partition for booting
(parted) mkpart esp fat32 32GB 32.5GB
# set the esp partition as `EFI system partition type`
(parted) set 23 esp on
Here esp partition is 512MB in size, from
32Gto32.5G
# partition for installing Windows
(parted) mkpart win ntfs 32.5GB 122GB
Here
32.5GBis the end ofesppartition, and122GBis the end of the originaluserdatapartition
Exit the parted tool finally.
(parted) quit
Now userdata resizing is done. Go back to your device and use recovery to format the new userdata partition. After formatting, reboot to Android to see if everything still works.
This part of the procedure usually applies only to Qualcomm Snapdragon devices that have Cellular Modem capabilites!
Omitting this step on Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 (SDM845) devices will fatally break cellular on your device! That means your SIM card slot won’t accept SIM cards anymore, your IMEI will disappear and it’s also possible that WiFi will break. (including in both Android and Windows)
Your only way to fix it later on is to restore your QCN backup or EFS(or also Modem) backups!
If you don’t have these backups, your chance of recovering your modem to original state is close to 0%!
Currently all Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 (SDM845) devices supported on the Renegade Project need modem provisioning to get cellular data and SMS to work.
In case of Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 (SDM845) devices, do the following:
Backup in TWRP on your device.EFS (and also Modem if you have this one) partitions and swipe to backup them.backups folder to your PC either by using adb pull /sdcard/TWRP/ or by using MTP and copying from the TWRP folder.This step can also be done later after post-installation and is not required.
Currently all Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 (SM8150) devices supported on the Renegade Project need modem provisioning to get cellular data and SMS to work.
In case of Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 (SM8150) devices, do the following:
modemst1 and modemst2 partitions from TWRP’s terminal or adb shell:dd if=/dev/block/by-name/modemst1 of=/sdcard/bootmodem_fs1
dd if=/dev/block/by-name/modemst2 of=/sdcard/bootmodem_fs2
adb pull /sdcard/bootmodem_fs1 and adb pull /sdcard/bootmodem_fs2 or by using MTP.There are currently two recommended methods for installing Windows:
Mass Storage Mode.Mass Storage Mode in UEFI, or it doesn’t work for you (see Step 4.1)Enter fastboot mode, boot the UEFI image:
fastboot boot name-of-uefi-image
Then you should see the boot menu. Choose UEFI Boot Menu using volume keys, then choose USB Attached SCSI (UAS) Storage to enter mass storage mode. You should hear the connection notification on your PC.
Open a terminal as admin, type diskpart and enter
DISKPART> lis dis
# It will print out all disks on your computer, find the largest one on your device
DISKPART> sel dis 6
# Disk 6 for example
DISKPART> lis par
# It will print out all partitions on UFS Lun 0, check if they are correct
DISKPART> sel par 23
# Select the ESP partition, in this case it's 23 for our device
DO NOT EXECUTE THE FOLLOWING COMMAND IF YOU ONLY WANT TO MOUNT PARTITIONS
DISKPART> format quick fs=fat32 label="System"
# Format ESP as fat32
DISKPART> assign letter="S"
# Assign drive letter
DISKPART> sel par 24
# Select Windows partition, in this case it's 24 for our device
DO NOT EXECUTE THE FOLLOWING COMMAND IF YOU ONLY WANT TO MOUNT PARTITIONS
DISKPART> format quick fs=ntfs label="Windows"
# Format Windows partition as NTFS
DISKPART> assign letter="W"
# Assign drive letter
DISKPART> exit
Don’t forget to use USB 3 ports on your PC and an USB 3 cable on your device to speed the installation process a lot!
Note that not all devices have USB 3 ports! (all Qualcomm Snapdragon 835(MSM8998), most of Snapdragon 845 (SDM845) devices and mostly Xiaomi and Poco devices with Snapdragon 855 (SM8150))
Firstly, we need to get the install.wim file, to do this:
install.wimIn the same powershell command prompt you have opened execute:
# <path/to/install.wim> should use either the path to the copied install.wim or path to the install.wim from the mounted iso
# W: is the assigned letter for the Windows partition
dism /apply-image /ImageFile:<path/to/install.wim> /index:1 /ApplyDir:W:\
Wait until the process finishes and after it’s done execute:
# W: is the assigned letter for the Windows partition
# S: is the assigned letter for the EFI partition
# if you use different ones, be sure to replace them!
bcdboot W:\Windows /s S: /f UEFI
This will create the BCD configuration in the EFI partition.
Drivers for Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 (SM8150) devices can’t be installed with Dism++ properly. You need to use DriverUpdater. Note that we might completely avoid the use of Dism++ in the future due to primitives and extensions not being installed by this tool!
There are currently two ways of installing drivers:
Note, only for Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 devices.
Unpack the driver pack previously downloaded from WOA-Drivers to a folder. In Dism++, select the new system from the panel above, then select Drivers -> Add, select the unpacked driver folder and wait until it completes.
Note, only for Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 devices.
The driver pack you downloaded could contain a tool called DriverUpdater (by @gus33000). If you didn’t find it there, download it from the link.
Now:
And execute:
# W: is the assigned letter for the Windows partition
# if you use a different one, be sure to replace it!
.\DriverUpdater.exe -d .\definitions\Desktop\ARM64\Internal\your_device_codename.txt -r . -p W:\
(replace the definition file to the one corresponding to your device, and replace the W:\ to the installation path of your Windows on ARM system)
Drivers in the WOA-Drivers repo are currently not properly signed, thus require you to enable driver test signing mode.
Execute following commands in the already opened powershell window:
cd S:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot
# S: is the ESP partition mounted in step 2.1.1
bcdedit /store BCD /set "{default}" testsigning on
bcdedit /store BCD /set "{default}" nointegritychecks on
bcdedit /store BCD /set "{default}" recoveryenabled no
You may want to flash devcfg image if your device needs one. Check your device specific user guide for details.
This section needs expansion.
You can inject necessary drivers into the boot.wim in the Windows ISO, then unpack all the files in the ISO to an NTFS partition on the UFS.
However, UEFI can’t boot from NTFS partition. You’ll need to extract files from https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/blob/master/res/uefi/uefi-ntfs.img to a FAT32 partition on the UFS.
After booting into Windows PE, open a command prompt from the Recovery panel, then follow the diskpart and Dism++ steps in 2.1
Work In Progress
also sometimes known as "Oops, you've lost internet connection"
The easiest fix is to:
oobe\bypassnro and press enter"I don't have internet"This part of the procedure usually applies only to Qualcomm Snapdragon devices that have Cellular Modem capabilites!
Currently all Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 (SDM845) devices supported on the Renegade Project need modem provisioning to get cellular data and SMS to work.
As we already have a backup, that we made in Step 1.3.1 Essential partitions on Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 devices, do now the following:
backups folder from your PC to /sdcard/TWRP/ either using adb push <path to the copied backups folder> /sdcard/TWRP/ or MTPRestoreModem and EFS and slide to restore.You can later confirm that modem works by:
Network & internet and click on CellularMobile operator settingsIMEI and Data class. These lines should not be blank now.This part of the procedure usually applies only to Qualcomm Snapdragon devices that have Cellular Modem capabilites!
Please note that if you also want calling requires you to dump the
ICan0value from a Single SIM (no Dual SIM) Qualcomm Snapdragon Windows on ARM device running Windows 10 up to build 18363!
Some devices like the Poco X3 Pro (vayu) needs provisioning on every reboot, please consult this with your device specific user guide for more information!
Currently all Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 (SM8150) devices supported on the Renegade Project need modem provisioning to get cellular data and SMS to work.
If you already have a dump of the modem partitions, skip to Step 3.2.2 Copying dumped partitions
To do this properly on your Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 (SM8150) device, do the following:
modemst1 and modemst2 partitions either from recovery or Android with root access:dd if=/dev/block/by-name/modemst1 of=/sdcard/bootmodem_fs1
dd if=/dev/block/by-name/modemst2 of=/sdcard/bootmodem_fs2
adb pull /sdcard/bootmodem_fs1 and adb pull /sdcard/bootmodem_fs2 or by using MTP.You should now have bootmodem_fs1 and bootmodem_fs2 partition dumps from your Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 (SM8150) on your computer.
To copy these dumps to the correct place on your device, do the following:
Please use Mass Storage Mode, you can’t copy these dumps if your device is booted in Windows!
\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\qcremotefs8150_<random data here>\bootmodem_fs1\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\qcremotefs8150_<random data here>\bootmodem_fs2You can later confirm that modem works by:
Network & internet and click on CellularMobile operator settingsIMEI and Data class. These lines should not be blank now.All troubleshooting steps moved to Troubleshooting!