Introducing Windows on arm. And by arm, we mean wrist

Windows on Arm has been around since the Surface RT – but this is another kind of arm altogether.

We appreciate some good creative insanity at Vulture Towers, and the idea of getting Windows running on an Android smartwatch certainly qualifies. Enter Windows on ARM, an inspiring project by Gustave Monce.

He has titled his project “Windows on ARM (ARM as defined by the cambridge dictionary, not the cambridge based firm).” We reckon the block capitals on “arm” are a bit misleading, but we respect the dedication to the joke on display here.

The project was, naturally, announced on April Fools’ Day, but since then he’s added a note to the top of the page:

Monce is a PhD student in Bordeaux, and has prior form for getting Windows running on devices never intended to run it. He previously launched DuoWOA, a project to run Arm64 Windows 11 on Microsoft’s Surface Duo – a dual-screen device that originally shipped with Android. The Register reported on his efforts in May 2022 with an October update when he got Wi-Fi and cellular data working. He also has another project, called LumiaWOA, which aims to get a full, unrestricted copy of Windows 10 or 11 running on the Nokia Lumia 950 and 950XL. This shipped with Windows 10 Mobile, the final descendant of Windows Phone.

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Although it doesn’t look like it does very much at all yet, we think he means it. Monce is using an Arm64 build of Windows PE. The abbreviation stands for Preinstallation Environment – it’s the Microsofty equivalent of a Linux live ISO. (Possibly the best-known derivative of WinPE is Hiren’s Boot CD, which The Reg has mentioned before as a useful rescue tool.)

Rather than being a fully installed local copy of Windows, he’s persuading his Google Pixel Watch 3 – a fairly well-specced Android watch that Mountain View announced last August – to boot a WinPE image from UEFI. That meant installing UEFI first, then enable USB mass-storage mode. Sadly, the tricky third stage, installing the OS on the watch, is as yet undocumented. As he says:

Even so, it’s quite impressive. Impressively useless, maybe, but impressive all the same. We don’t hate the idea of being able to root a smartwatch and install our own firmware on the thing. Then again, you could just buy a Pine64 PineTime. ®