win32.md

title
Windows Support

Introduction

The Windows MSI package is built automatically in continuous integration. Only some plugins are included, any plugins that use Linux-specific features like udev, efivarfs or devfs are disabled. However, some USB devices updatable in Linux are also updatable in Microsoft Windows too.

Installation

First, install the .msi package from the release announcements, or any of the CI artifacts such as dist/setup/fwupd-1.9.9-setup-x86_64.msi.

Then click More info and Run anyway buttons:

If not already an administrator, click "yes" on the User Account Control (UAC) dialog:

There are currently no start menu or desktop installed, although this is something we want to add in the future. In the meantime, use the start menu to open a Command Prompt:

Then click yes on the next UAC dialog if you chose to run the Command Prompt as the Administrator:

Then navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\fwupd\bin

Then fwupdtool.exe can be used just like fwupdtool on Linux or macOS.

Note: the fwupd.exe process also works, and you can use another Command Prompt window to run fwupdmgr.exe from the same location.

There is no dbus-daemon on Windows, and so any local D-Bus client should also then connect to IP address 127.0.0.1 with TCP port 1341 rather than resolving the well-known org.freedesktop.fwupd bus name.