Make a Windows 11 Image That Runs on 2GB of RAM With Tiny11 Builder

admin February 25, 2023

0 4 minutes read

Windows 11 is an out-of-the-box, resource-hungry operating system that consumes a lot of RAM and CPU cycles, making it impossible to run on older or less powerful systems. The official system requirements not only require TPM Security and Secure Boot, but also at least 4 GB of RAM, a dual-core processor, and a 64 GB SSD. But with the release of Tiny11 Builder, you can create lightweight Windows 11 installations to avoid these requirements and work well even on PCs with limited memory and processing power.

Tiny11, a custom image of Windows 11 by Twitter user NTDEV, solves these problems by removing unnecessary libraries, apps, and services, allowing the system to run with as little as 2GB of RAM and with just 12GB of disk space. Do not occupy and do not check any of the following: system request. However, until now, using Tiny11 required downloading the entire operating system from NTDEV’s cloud storage drive, and it was not possible to choose the version of Windows 11, and downloading the entire OS from outside of Microsoft was cumbersome. bottom. .

Well, NTDEV is released Tiny11 builder (opens in new tab)is a free tool that can convert the latest Windows 11 ISO (installer file) into one that installs a lighter version of the OS. In a few easy steps you can get Windows 11 Home, Pro, Education or Enterprise and use Tiny11 Builder to clean the clutter before installing. According to NTDEV, only the latest builds 22621.1265 and 22621.525 are officially supported at this time. However, this may remove extraneous stuff from pre-release builds.

I used Tiny11 Builder to make a quick build of Windows 11 Home and installed it on both a virtual machine and a slow 10 year old ThinkPad X131e. The VM was very fast, the ThinkPad was very slow on Windows 10, and characters appeared within seconds of typing, but were actually usable.

Below I will show you how to use the Tiny11 Builder to create your own lightweight Windows 11 ISO. If you have a Raspberry Pi, also check out our tutorial on how to install Tiny11 on a Raspberry Pi.

How to create a lightweight Windows 11 image with Tiny11

1. download Tiny11 builder (opens in new tab) From Github and unzip in a dedicated folder.

2. download Windows 11 ISOs (opens in new tab) From Microsoft (or using UUP Dump). Only builds 22621.525 and 22621.1265 are officially supported at this time. The build number was 22621.525 when I downloaded the ISO from Microsoft and created it using the media creation tool. For more information on obtaining the ISO, see How to Download the Windows 11 ISO.

3. Mount the ISO. To do this, right click on it[マウント]Choose.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

File Explorer will open with a drive letter representing the ISO that acts like a physical drive.

File Explorer showing the drive letter of the mounted ISO

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Four. Find Windows Build Number on ISO (if you don’t know for sure). To do this, start an elevated command prompt and type: dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile: [DRIVELETTER]:\sources\install.wim /index:1 where [DRIVELETTER] Replaced by the drive letter of the mounted ISO. If that doesn’t work, dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:[DRIVELETTER]:\sources\install.esd /index:1. For example, if the ISO is mounted as drive letter F, the two commands to try are:

dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:F:\sources\install.wim /index:1
dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:F:\sources\install.esd /index:1

The reason you should try both is that the information is stored in a file called install.wim or install.esd. In my case install.wim worked with the ISO downloaded directly from Microsoft and install.esd worked when I built the ISO using the Media Creation Tool.

If the command succeeds, it will output a list of information about the ISO, including the build number. Look under “Version” and “ServicePack Build”

build number

(Image credit: Future)

Five. Launch tiny11 Creator.bat or tiny11 Creator 22621.525.bat as administrator., depending on the ISO build.To do this, right click on the icon and[管理者として実行]Choose.

tiny11 Creator.bat run as administrator

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

6. Click “Details” and run anyway When the Windows smart screen warns you about running a program.

Click More info and run anyway if prompted by Smart Screen

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

again, [はい]Click If warned by Windows User Account Control. A command prompt window appears.

7. Please enter a drive letter The ISO is mounted and press enterIn our case it was D.

Please enter a drive letter

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

You will see a list of different Windows “images” such as Windows 11 Home, Windows 11 Pro, Windows 11 Pro Education, etc. depending on whether the ISO file contains only one version of Windows 11 or multiple versions. There are cases.

List of Windows images in the ISO

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

8. Please enter the image number Required Windows version and press enterIn our case, we hit “1” for Windows 11 Home. If no image is listed, choose 1 as the default.

Select image number

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

You will have to wait a few minutes while the software burns the ISO file.

Burning ISO files with Tiny11 Builder

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Once the process is complete, you will have a file called tiny11.iso in the same folder as Tiny11 Creator.

Tiny11 ISO

(Image credit: Future)

This ISO file can be “burned” to a USB flash drive so Tiny 11 can be installed on your PC. Alternatively, you can use it to install Windows 11 in your virtual machine. If you don’t know how to create a boot disk from an ISO file, see How to do a clean install of Windows 11.

This Tiny11 version of Windows needs to be installed on any PC and does not follow any system requirements such as TPM requirements, secure boot requirements, RAM requirements, etc. More importantly, it only uses about 2GB of RAM out of the box. Obviously, adding your own software will make your system use more resources.

Based on my experience, Tiny11 works on systems with only 2 GB of RAM, but I would say it works on systems with at least 4 GB of RAM. Every app running inside the OS needs headroom.

Install browser on Tiny11

Note that you may see a blank Edge icon on your desktop, but Edge is not installed. So if you want to install the web browser, you’ll need to copy the installer from another PC, use the Microsoft Store, or use the winget command on the command line.come in winget install -e –id Google.Chrome Download and install Chrome.

What has been removed from Windows 11 in Tiny11?

According to NTDEV, Tiny11 has removed the following apps and features from Windows 11:Of course, the Windows Store or Control Panel[Windows 機能の有効化と無効化]You can always undo them using the menu.