Install Windows 11

What it does

This is the step that puts an operating system on a blank disk. StageReady installs Windows 11 from bare metal using OSDCloud: it wipes the target disk, lays down a fresh Windows 11 image, and — this is the part that saves you a driver headache — auto-detects the manufacturer and model and injects the correct OEM driver pack (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Surface) before the machine ever boots into Windows. No golden image, no driver hunting.

If the device already has Windows — a machine straight from the manufacturer, or one being repurposed — this step is skipped automatically, and every step after it still runs.

It runs in WinPE, before Windows exists on the machine, so it's naturally one of the first steps in a template.

Options

Option	What it controls
Edition	Which Windows 11 edition to install: Home, Pro, Enterprise, Education, or the matching N variants. Defaults to Pro.

Good to know

• The image is always downloaded as en-US for the widest driver and tooling compatibility. That's the OS install language, not what the user sees — set the user-facing display language, keyboard and timezone with the Language & region step.
• Always the latest Windows 11 build available from Microsoft at install time — you're never deploying a stale image.
• If the install fails, the setup stops by default — there's no point running later steps against a machine with no OS.

Part of the step catalogue.