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Install Windows 11 on ESXi without TPM support

  1. Go the Microsoft site and download the Windows 11 ISO. You don’t want the installer or the media creation tool, just download the ISO itself.
  2. Setup your virtual machine. Windows 11 requires a minimum of 2 virtual cores and at least 8GB of ram. With my install I used 2 vCores and 16GB for good measure.
  3. Set your machine to use EFI and “secure boot” in the “VM Options” tab. It will be set to Bios by default so don’t skip this step.
  4. Mount your ISO and boot it up.
  5. At boot like always hit any key to boot to the Windows installer.
  6. As soon as the installer environment boots press Shift + F10 to get the command prompt and type “regedit” followed by the return key.
  7. Once the Registry editor comes up navigate or jump to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup
  8. Create a new folder here called “LabConfig”
  9. You will need to add a DWORD (32-bit) entry BypassTPMCheck
    1. optionally add BypassSecureBootCheck and BypassRAMCheck as well. set values to 1 as well.
  10. Once you add these entries set them to 1
  11. Close regedit
  12. Change the directory to D: or whatever the DVD drive is
  13. run .\setup.exe to launch the installer
  14. You should now be able to install the VM.
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