Windows 11 ISO can be downloaded easily from Microsoft website as we have already explained previously in how to download Windows 11 ISO. This ISO image file contains multiple editions of Windows 11 such as Windows Home, Windows Pro, Windows Education, Windows Enterprise and then there are N editions for all of these.
The main install.wim file is huge and contains all of these editions. But why not extract only the edition specific WIM from the large install.wim so that you can quickly install that Windows 11 edition on your PC when it is needed? With the help of the DISM tool, it is possible and here is how it can be done:
- Mount the Windows 11 ISO by right-clicking on the ISO file and choosing Mount from the right-click context-menu. This will create a virtual drive and load the ISO disc image in that drive. For me, it was loaded in the F: drive.
- Launch an elevated command prompt which can be done easily by pressing Win+X and then A. You can also search for cmd.exe in the Start menu, right-click on it and choose Run as administrator from there.
- In order to find the index number of the Windows edition, give the following command DISM /Get-WinInfo /WimFile:F:\sources\install.wim
- We found that Windows 11 Home N is available at index 2 in the previous command output. We note down this index number. We can do this for any other edition too.
- In order to extract Windows 11 Home N, we give the following command: DISM /Export-Image /SourceImageFile:F:\sources\install.wim /SourceIndex:2 /DestinationImageFile:D:\ISO\Windows11_Home_N.wim
Similarly, we can extract the WIM for any other Windows editions such as Professional, Education, Enterprise and their respective N editions. In order to be able to use these commands, you should be running a new version of the DISM command which comes included with Windows 10 and Windows 11. Using them on an earlier version of Windows might not work.