Windows 10 booted on the Lumia 950 XL

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by Surur Davids 

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A month ago we wrote about hacker Ben | imbushuo writing a custom UEFI bootloader for the Lumia 950 XL.

Today he posted another video showing his latest progress, showing the handset actually booting to the Windows 10 set up stage.

https://twitter.com/imbushuo/status/991914533676433408

The main barrier to installing Microsoft’s very latest OS, Windows 10 on ARM, on Windows 10 Mobile handsets has been Windows 10’s requirement for a secure boot environment, mediated by the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). Ben has been working on writing the minimum set of required drivers to get the UEFI up and running. Previously he said he achieved this by installing TianoCore, an open source implementation of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, and then chaining this with the stock UEFI and Windows Boot Manager.

Previously Windows 10 has been booted on the Lumia 950 prototype, the RX-130 or “Hapanero”,  but that required a custom firmware which was only available for that handset and not transferable,  making Ben’s achievement much more significant.

To keep an eye on Ben’s progress follow him on Twitter here.

Surur Davids

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Surur Davids is the founder of WMPoweruser which later became MSPoweruser.com. He's a smartphone expert with over a decade of experience.

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