Install Windows 10 on a Digital Ocean Droplet 2022 - 2023 with RDC

Install Windows 10 on a Digital Ocean Droplet 2022 - 2023 with RDC

Get $200 free credits with Digital Ocean from here: https://m.do.co/c/cc46f4d93a22

You will need a credit/debit card, which Digital Ocean will take a small test payment normally between ($5 - $7) which will be refunded straight away.

Software used in this guide:

Putty: https://www.putty.org/

VNC Viewer: https://www.realvnc.com/en/connect/download/viewer/

mediacreationtool.bat for making the ISO (I will be using this tool in my Windows 11 install on a Droplet as well): https://github.com/AveYo/MediaCreationTool.bat/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

Drivers: https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/archive-virtio/
Whichever is the current release, at the time of this guide it was (virtio-win-0.1.225-2)


Droplet Details:

IP Address: Droplet IP Address
Password: Your Password

Putty Commands:

apt-get update && apt-get install qemu -y
apt install qemu-utils -y
apt install qemu-system-x86-xen -y
apt install qemu-system-x86 -y
apt install qemu-kvm -y
apt install progress

qemu-img create -f raw windows10.img 18G

wget -O virtio-win.iso 'https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/archive-virtio/virtio-win-0.1.225-2/virtio-win-0.1.225.iso'

https://www.station307.com/#/

wget -O windows10.iso 'URL of your windows10.iso'

ls

Copy all the below txt & paste into Putty.

qemu-system-x86_64 \
  -m 3G \
  -cpu host \
  -enable-kvm \
  -boot order=d \
  -drive file=windows10.iso,media=cdrom \
  -drive file=windows10.img,format=raw,if=virtio \
  -drive file=virtio-win.iso,media=cdrom \
  -device usb-ehci,id=usb,bus=pci.0,addr=0x4 \
  -device usb-tablet \
  -vnc :0 \

And press Enter twice.

When you're installing Windows sometimes you may get an oobekeyboard you can just skip this.

Also you may get an oobesettingsmultipage error just click try again.

Open gpedit.msc

Expand Windows Settings

Expand Security Settings

Expand Local Policies and click on Security Options
Accounts: Limit local account use of blank passwords to console logon only and right click
and select properties and select Disable, click Apply and OK

Close the Local Group Policy Editor window

Open CMD and run as Administrator

gpupdate /force

Once the policies have been updated close the CMD window by typing exit

Now close VNC Viewer

In Putty compress the Windows template.

Press ctrl C

dd if=windows10.img | gzip -c>windows10.gz | progress -m

To download the compressed file.

apt install apache2
sudo ufw allow 'Apache'
cp windows10.gz /var/www/html/

http://46.101.75.235/windows10.gz

Go to your Digital Ocean Droplet & rebuild it, the reason we rebuild it is so that Windows sees the same hardware and won't crash.

Recovery Console Commands:

Press the number: 6

https://www.station307.com/#/

wget -O- URL OF YOUR windows10.gz | gunzip | dd of=/dev/vda

When you set your droplet to boot from the hard drive and launch the recovery console again you will get quite a bit of lag from your mouse to the console mouse pointer.

Just take it slowly to move the console mouse pointer to get to the Internet & network settings once there you can use the.

TAB, Spacebar, Arrow & Enter keys to navigate to the correct network adaptor and set the correct details for the.

IP Address, Gateway, and Netmask which will be shown at the bottom of your console.

You can use any DNS server I just use Google.

Once you see you have an Internet connection you can now open RCP and enter the IP Address and password and connect.

Once connected you will see you can use your mouse & keyboard as normal with no lag and you can close the recovery console.

You have now installed Windows 10 Pro on a Digital Ocean Droplet.

You will also notice that you're not getting the full HDD space that your droplet came with, this is because of the image file we made of only 18GB.

We did that because that is what Windows needs to be installed on and saves time on compressing that image.

So now we need to expand that to take full use of the droplet HDD space which generally you can do in Disk Management but because there is a recovery partition in between the C drive and the unallocated space you can extend the volume.

To get over this you can either use a third-party tool to merge the C drive & the unallocated space or personally AOMEI Partition Assistant but use which one you prefer.

Or you can delete the recovery partition and then extend the volume in Disk Management, there is a guide here:

https://www.diskpart.com/res/extend-volume-blocked-by-a-recovery-partition-on-windows-10-0825.html

So once you have done either of the above you'll be able to use all of the HDD space on the droplet and all the resources that came with your droplet of choice, memory and so on.

Any comments please leave them below.