Creating Installation Media with Ventoy and Windows 11 ISO

In this guide, we'll walk you through the steps to create a bootable installation media for Windows 11 using Ventoy, and modify the ei.cfg file to ensure the installation of Windows 11 Pro, regardless of any OEM Home keys present in the firmware.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

• A USB flash drive with at least 8GB of storage
• A Windows machine to perform the setup
• Ventoy downloaded from Ventoy's official website
• An official Windows 11 ISO file downloaded from Microsoft's website

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Download and Install Ventoy

1. Download Ventoy:

2. Visit Ventoy's official download page and download the latest version of Ventoy for Windows.

3. Extract Ventoy:

4. Extract the downloaded Ventoy ZIP file to a convenient location on your computer.

5. Run Ventoy2Disk:

6. Open the extracted folder and run Ventoy2Disk.exe as an administrator.

7. Prepare Your USB Drive:

8. Insert your USB flash drive into your computer.
9. In the Ventoy2Disk window, select your USB drive from the device list.
10. Click Install to create a Ventoy bootable USB drive. Note that this will format your USB drive, so make sure to back up any important data before proceeding.

Step 2: Download Windows 11 ISO

1. Visit Microsoft’s Download Page:

2. Go to the official Microsoft Windows 11 download page.

3. Download the ISO:

4. Under the "Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO)" section, select Windows 11 and click Download.
5. Choose your product language and click Confirm.
6. Click 64-bit Download to download the Windows 11 ISO file.

Step 3: Copy the Windows 11 ISO to the USB Drive

1. Copy ISO to USB Drive:
2. Once the download is complete, copy the Windows 11 ISO file to the Ventoy USB drive.

Step 4: Modify ei.cfg to Force Windows 11 Pro Installation

1. Mount the ISO:

2. On your Windows machine, right-click the downloaded Windows 11 ISO file and select Mount.

3. Locate ei.cfg:

4. Navigate to the mounted ISO drive and open the sources folder.

5. If there isn't an ei.cfg file, you'll need to create one.

6. Create or Edit ei.cfg:

7. Open Notepad (or any text editor) and create a new file.

8. Add the following content to the file:

   [EditionID]
   Professional
   
   [Channel]
   Retail
   
   [VL]
   0
   

9. Save ei.cfg:

10. Save the file as ei.cfg.
11. Copy this ei.cfg file to the sources folder on the Ventoy USB drive.

Step 5: Boot from the USB Drive and Install Windows 11

1. Boot from USB:
2. Insert the Ventoy USB drive into the target computer.
3. Restart the computer and enter the BIOS/UEFI settings (commonly accessed by pressing a key such as F2, F10, DEL, or ESC during startup).

4. Set the USB drive as the primary boot device and save the changes.

5. Install Windows 11:

6. The computer will boot from the Ventoy USB drive. Select the Windows 11 ISO from the Ventoy menu.
7. Follow the on-screen instructions to install Windows 11 Pro. The modified ei.cfg file will ensure that Windows 11 Pro is installed, bypassing any OEM Home keys in the firmware.