Creating Windows Installers on iPad
Requirements
- UEFI motherboard.
- USB-C iPad OR a Lightning iPad with a USB 3 Camera Adapter.
- USB Flash Drive.
- Windows 11 ISO.
1. Format the Drive to FAT32
For the motherboard to recognize the initial boot files, the drive must use the FAT32 file system.
- Open the Files app.
- On iPadOS, choose MS-DOS (FAT).
- Verify the format is correct; it should be completely empty.
2. Prepare the Initial Files
Standard FAT32 partitions cannot hold files larger than 4GB, which means the 5GB install.wim file in the Windows ISO cannot be stored.
- Download BWBundle (zip) or the UEFI NTFS driver (img) (from Rufus).
- Extract all files from the Windows ISO to the USB drive EXCEPT for install.wim.
- This creates a “light” installer capable of booting into a command prompt.
3. Partitioning via Diskpart
Boot the “light” installer on your PC and press Shift + F10 to open the Command Prompt.
- Type diskpart to start the partition tool.
- Select your USB drive (be extremely careful to choose the correct disk by size).
- Use clean to erase the drive.
- Create two partitions:
- A small 100MB FAT16 partition for the UEFI driver.
- A large exFAT partition for the full Windows installer files.
- Format the exFAT partition: format fs=exfat.
- Format the FAT partition: format fs=fat.
4. Final Setup and Booting
- Copy the UEFI NTFS driver to the small FAT partition.
- Copy the entire contents of the Windows ISO (including the large install.wim) to the exFAT partition.
- Disable Secure Boot in your PC’s BIOS/UEFI settings, as third-party drivers are not signed by Microsoft.
- Boot from the USB drive. The motherboard will load the driver from the FAT partition, allowing it to see the exFAT partition and launch the full Windows installer.
Note: You may need to use regedit during installation to bypass TPM or Secure Boot requirements if your hardware is older.