- You can run Microsoft's new Windows CPC aka NXT OS on your PC by following our guide.
- It's designed for thin PC clients like the Windows 365 Link.
- The Windows CPC OS is a stripped-down version of Windows and the shell is powered by Edge WebView.
Microsoft recently launched the Windows 365 Link, a mini PC that runs Windows on the cloud. It’s basically a glorified Remote Desktop machine. That said, Microsoft has packed the Windows 365 Link with some decent hardware. It features an unknown Intel chip, 8GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. But what about the local OS it runs?
Well, Microsoft has developed a special version of Windows for the Windows 365 Link. It runs Windows CPC (codenamed “NXT”), a stripped-down version of Windows. In fact, the shell on top of Windows NXT is an HTML webpage. Core components like Explorer, Task Manager, and Notepad are unavailable. And the onboarding page is powered by Edge WebView2.
Thanks to BobPony, I installed Windows CPC aka NXT in a virtual machine on my PC to tinker around and find more details about Microsoft’s new OS. If you are curious, here is how you can install Windows CPC on your PC.
Run Windows CPC aka NXT
- You can download the Windows CPC image from the tweet mentioned above.
- After that, install VMWare (Free) to create a virtual machine.
- Now, load the ISO and install it just like any other Windows installation.
- Once booted, it will ask you to sign in with a work account. It doesn’t support a standard Microsoft account.
- For some reason, it couldn’t access my Wi-Fi network so the login screen didn’t appear. I force-started the shell through Command Prompt, but it resulted in an error.
Hands-on: Windows CPC Experience
Since Windows CPC doesn’t have a traditional Explorer-based interface, I launched Command Prompt on the onboarding page by pressing “Shift + F10”. Next, I checked the Windows version and it said “Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.26100.2314]”. However, when I inspected the System32 folder, it contained multiple NXT-related files including NXTShellLauncher.exe, NXTUpdateManager.exe, and more.
Apart from that, in the Program Files folder, there are no pre-loaded apps except Windows365. It contains the onboarding HTML file and images for the Windows CPC thin client. I tried to run multiple system apps including taskmgr, resmon, diskpart, powershell, tasklist, regedit, etc., but they were not available. I could only run dxdiag, Narrator, and on-screen keyboard through CMD.
As I said before, Windows CPC aka NXT is really a lightweight OS. It feels like a Windows version of ChromeOS with most of the components powered by Edge WebView2. While the OS is not meant for general consumers, the idea of running a lightweight Windows OS on consumer PCs remains a pipedream. Meanwhile, if you want to install a minimal Windows 11 OS, you can check out Tiny11. And if you have any questions, let us know in the comments below.
