June 15 turned out to be quite an eventful day for Windows enthusiasts. Not only did the rumors of Microsoft developing Window 11 became a reality, screenshots of the new OS appeared online.
This was followed by a fully operational ISO leaking out.
The version in question was Windows 11 Pro 21996.1, which the tech community quickly took for a spin to find out what it brought. And though it was not the whole enchilada, this version did pack in a bunch of new features and options.
We’ll get to them shortly, but first let’s take a look at the installation process.
The first thing you’ll notice is that the Windows 11 has the same installation base that has existed since Window 7. The file structure and the setup process, the overall look and feel is familiar. And there is a good reason for this — this build is Windows 10 Pro with a slight reskin.
Running a command to see full details about the ISO file, we get:
So, this is more information about the image, which shows that this leaked copy is very much what you would expect it to be. Microsoft clearly does not want to build something anew when it is already working well.
We installed this early copy of Windows 11 on a virtual machine using the newest version of VMware Workstation Pro. The installation process went as smooth as it could, taking but five minutes to complete on our test bed.
Merits a mention here that deploying this on a physical machine entails a workaround. The setup requires TPM 2.0 to install directly on a PC. This is for the Trusted Platform Module 2.0 chip that legacy systems do not house.
Since this leaked copy is likely from internal testing, you will need to swap out a DLL on the ISO.
If you’d still like to go ahead and install this on your desktop computer or laptop, then find and download the appraiserres.dll file from DLLme.com, and exchange it with the one in the Sources folder of the ISO image.
Setup will work fine now, without throwing an error, and you should be on your way.
