Microsoft still hosts the ISO for every Windows release it ever shipped. The download page just stopped listing them. This puts them back.
One snippet in the console on Microsoft's own Windows 11 download page and the edition dropdown comes back with Windows 7, 8.1, 10 and older Windows 11 builds in it. Pick one, pick a language, and Microsoft hands you a real download link from its own CDN. No third-party mirror, no torrent, no "activator" bundled in by whoever re-uploaded it.
- Open https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11 in Chrome, Edge or Firefox.
- Press F12 and go to the Console tab.
- Paste the contents of
windows-editions.jsand press Enter. (Edge and Chrome make you typeallow pastingthe first time. That warning is there for good reason: read anything you paste into a console, including this.) - The dropdown now says Select edition. Pick one, hit Download, choose a language, and take the 64-bit link.
Reloading the page undoes everything. Nothing is installed and nothing is stored.
Worth two minutes if you rebuild machines more than once a year.
- Bookmark any page, then edit that bookmark (Chrome and Edge: Ctrl+Shift+O; Firefox: Ctrl+Shift+O).
- Name it Windows Back Catalog and replace the URL with the single line in
bookmarklet.txt. - On the Microsoft download page, click the bookmark. Same result, no DevTools.
Keep it on the bookmarks bar and the whole thing is one click. It is the same
code as the console version, minified, with two changes that only matter here: it
uses getElementById rather than a #product-edition selector, because a # in a
bookmark URL is read as a fragment and truncates the script, and it reports failure
with an alert rather than console.log, since the console is closed.
The last public build of each line, which is what you actually want to install from:
| Release | Editions offered |
|---|---|
| Windows 7 SP1 (7601) | Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium (+N), Professional (+N), Ultimate (+N) |
| Windows 8.1 (9600.17415) | 8.1, N, K, KN, Single Language, Professional LE (+N/K/KN) |
| Windows 10 22H2 (19045.2965) | Multi-edition, plus Home China (19045.2006) |
| Windows 11 24H2 (26100.1742) | x64, Arm64 |
| Windows 11 25H2 (26200.6584) | x64, Arm64 |
N editions ship without Windows Media Player, K/KN are the Korean variants,
and LE is the discounted "with Bing" build. If you don't specifically need one of
those, take the plain edition.
The dropdown is a filter, not a catalogue. Every option carries a numeric
product edition ID, and the page posts that ID to Microsoft's own service at
https://www.microsoft.com/software-download-connector/api/ to get back the SKU
list and, after the language step, the signed download URL.
Microsoft removed the old options from the page. It never removed the IDs from the
service behind it. The script only rewrites the <option> list and fires a
change event so the page's own handler runs, exactly as if you had clicked an
option that Microsoft still listed. Everything after that is Microsoft's normal
flow, untouched.
Which is also why this is not a download tool. It cannot fetch anything, cannot bypass anything, and stops working the moment Microsoft takes an ID offline.
- A VPN or datacenter IP gets you refused. Microsoft blocks the service from
known anonymising ranges and answers with "We are unable to complete your
request at this time" (error
715-123130). That message is sitting in the page's own source, waiting. Turn the VPN off for the download. - The download link expires in 24 hours and is tied to the session that made it. Copy it into a download manager if you like, but don't bookmark it.
- The script wipes the option Microsoft did list. The current Windows 11 build is a real option on the untouched page; the snippet replaces the whole list, so that one goes with it. Reload to get it back.
- Old editions have fewer languages. The language step is Microsoft's and it only offers what actually exists for that SKU.
- An ID can go dead. If one edition errors while its neighbours work, Microsoft pulled that build. Nothing in this repo can fix that.
- Windows 7 and 8.1 are out of support. No security updates since January 2020 and January 2023. Installing one on a machine that touches the internet is a bad idea, and saying so is not the same as refusing to hand you the ISO.
This gets you the installation media Microsoft publishes for free. It does not get you a product key, and it is not a workaround for one. Bring your own licence.
The point of pulling from Microsoft directly is that the file is checkable. Compare the hash against Microsoft's published SHA-256 for that build before you write it to a USB stick:
Get-FileHash .\Win11_25H2_English_x64.iso -Algorithm SHA256
MIT. The edition IDs are Microsoft's; this repo is thirty lines of JavaScript that types them into a dropdown for you.