I’ve just gotten my new Framework 16 and was going through windows 11 setup. When I was prompted with an initial network setup no options came up even after a few minutes, i restarted and tried again, same thing. I opened up the laptop to check the wifi chip and everything appears to be seated correctly. I’ve seen similar issues where people booted with an ethernet connection then had to download the driver bundle. I didn’t purchase the ethernet card and really don’t want to have to wait for one to come, is there a way I can get these drivers before windows is setup? Thanks so much
Drivers are available on the framework website but not sure if windows will pick them up off a usb drive during installation. Someone said you can tether your phone via usb for it to work.
Windows doesn’t come with the driver for the RZ616 wifi card built in. The driver needs to be installed manually.
You can use Rufus to create a modified Windows installer which bypasses the network requirement on setup as mentioned on the setup guide (which I did), or open cmd at the step requiring internet with Shift+F10 and use the “OOBE\BYPASSNRO” trick.
After bypassing network requirements during initial setup and getting to desktop I just transferred driver package over using USB drive, installed, and network works.
It would have been nice if the framework windows 11 installation guide had mentioned the bypass trick. I couldn’t make a modified installer because the later versions of rufus don’t run on windows 7.
I do have the Ethernet but was trying to install with sighted assistance with a chap who couldn’t get upstairs to where the Ethernet connection was.
I forgot I owned power-line adaptors or could have set that up in advance.
Thank you so much this worked perfectly.