How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu
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I want to make bootable USB with Win10 ISO image from laptop with Ubuntu Desktop.
I tried to do it with built-in "Disk Image Writer" (or "Disks") app, but my USB is not bootable, after the image is saved to USB.
Files are correctly saved on USB, but I cannot boot from it (I tried it with 2 different USB sticks)What is the normal way to make bootable USB from Win10 image on Ubuntu?
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What do you want to do with this bootable Win10 usb?
Will an existing Win10 ISO work? Like the MS Win10 install ISO, or something Hirens?
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@Mario-Jakovina said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
What is the normal way to make bootable USB from Win10 image on Ubuntu?
dd, I think. I've done this but it has been a while. I thought that the Disk Writer normally worked.
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@gjacobse said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
What do you want to do with this bootable Win10 usb?
Install Windows 10...
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I'll quote myself here
But the steps would be:- Partition USB with a primary bootable FAT32 partition
- Copy files from Win10 ISO onto the USB
No special software needed. Can be done on any OS.
@Pete-S said in Make a Bootable Windows 10 USB Installer from Fedora Linux:
But in all honesty it's very easy to make a bootable windows installer USB drive manually. Just make a primary bootable FAT32 partition on the USB drive and copy the files from the ISO onto it. Done.
You can copy more files onto the drive, for instance drivers or other software. If you do that, it makes sense to make a dd image of the entire thing when you're done. That way you can easily write a new USB drive with your custom files on it.
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@gjacobse said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
What do you want to do with this bootable Win10 usb?
Will an existing Win10 ISO work? Like the MS Win10 install ISO, or something Hirens?
Install Win10 as @DustinB3403 said
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@Pete-S said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
I'll quote myself here
But the steps would be:- Partition USB with a primary bootable FAT32 partition
- Copy files from Win10 ISO onto the USB
No special software needed. Can be done on any OS.
I can make FAT32 primary partition with Gparted, but I cannot make it bootable with Gparted. It says:
Unable to read the contents of this file system!
Because of this some operations may be unavailable.
The cause might be a missing software package.
The following list of software packages is required for fat32 file system support: dosfstools, mtools. -
@scottalanmiller said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
@Mario-Jakovina said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
What is the normal way to make bootable USB from Win10 image on Ubuntu?
dd, I think. I've done this but it has been a while. I thought that the Disk Writer normally worked.
dd is what I use most often. Use fdisk to delete the partitions on your USB. Then you'd have something like
dd if=/path/to/iso of=/path/to/usb/dev bs=4M
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@EddieJennings said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
@scottalanmiller said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
@Mario-Jakovina said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
What is the normal way to make bootable USB from Win10 image on Ubuntu?
dd, I think. I've done this but it has been a while. I thought that the Disk Writer normally worked.
dd is what I use most often. Use fdisk to delete the partitions on your USB. Then you'd have something like
dd if=/path/to/iso of=/path/to/usb/dev bs=4M
But the Win10 ISO file isn't bootable. It isn't a hybrid image like many linux distros have. So it won't work.
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@Mario-Jakovina said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
@Pete-S said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
I'll quote myself here
But the steps would be:- Partition USB with a primary bootable FAT32 partition
- Copy files from Win10 ISO onto the USB
No special software needed. Can be done on any OS.
I can make FAT32 primary partition with Gparted, but I cannot make it bootable with Gparted. It says:
Unable to read the contents of this file system!
Because of this some operations may be unavailable.
The cause might be a missing software package.
The following list of software packages is required for fat32 file system support: dosfstools, mtools.That's strange. Bootable or not is just a flag in the partition table. You shouldn't need any additional packages for that.
Maybe ubuntu tried to mount it as soon as you made the partition.
Found this on a quick search:
"You should be able to right-click on the partition you want to set as bootable and click "Manage Flags", and then check the box for the boot flag." -
@Pete-S said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
@EddieJennings said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
@scottalanmiller said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
@Mario-Jakovina said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
What is the normal way to make bootable USB from Win10 image on Ubuntu?
dd, I think. I've done this but it has been a while. I thought that the Disk Writer normally worked.
dd is what I use most often. Use fdisk to delete the partitions on your USB. Then you'd have something like
dd if=/path/to/iso of=/path/to/usb/dev bs=4M
But the Win10 ISO file isn't bootable. It isn't a hybrid image like many linux distros have. So it won't work.
I see. Truth be told, I replied without actually testing :(. I should know better than to assume what works for my various Linux ISOs would work for windows :).
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@EddieJennings said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
@Pete-S said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
@EddieJennings said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
@scottalanmiller said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
@Mario-Jakovina said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
What is the normal way to make bootable USB from Win10 image on Ubuntu?
dd, I think. I've done this but it has been a while. I thought that the Disk Writer normally worked.
dd is what I use most often. Use fdisk to delete the partitions on your USB. Then you'd have something like
dd if=/path/to/iso of=/path/to/usb/dev bs=4M
But the Win10 ISO file isn't bootable. It isn't a hybrid image like many linux distros have. So it won't work.
I see. Truth be told, I replied without actually testing :(. I should know better than to assume what works for my various Linux ISOs would work for windows :).
So true
Well, Microsoft's idea is that you should use their Media Creation Tool to download and write to a USB or save as an ISO file. But to do that you need Windows. Catch 22.
Problem with a lot of linux desktops are that they are too user friendly and will auto-mount and do stuff on their own.
user_friendly != sysadmin_friendly
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@Pete-S said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
Maybe ubuntu tried to mount it as soon as you made the partition.
Found this on a quick search:
"You should be able to right-click on the partition you want to set as bootable and click "Manage Flags", and then check the box for the boot flag."I unmounted partition.
But I cannot "Manage flags" becuase it is Fat32 (and Linnux is missing some packages for it).When I write Win10 ISO image with "Disks" app, I also can't "Manage flags", as it is udf formatted partition
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@Mario-Jakovina said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
@Pete-S said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
Maybe ubuntu tried to mount it as soon as you made the partition.
Found this on a quick search:
"You should be able to right-click on the partition you want to set as bootable and click "Manage Flags", and then check the box for the boot flag."I unmounted partition.
But I cannot "Manage flags" becuase it is Fat32 (and Linnux is missing some packages for it).When I write Win10 ISO image with "Disks" app, I also can't "Manage flags", as it is udf formatted partition
OK, try and install the packages it complains about.
Run in a terminal:
sudo apt install dosfstools mtools
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@Pete-S said in How to make bootable Win10 USB from Ubuntu:
Problem with a lot of linux desktops are that they are too user friendly and will auto-mount and do stuff on their own. user_friendly != sysadmin_friendly
Don't use a desktop, just use the command line
Unmounting is just the umount command, very easy to unmount it if you don't want it. Windows automounts, too.
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Don't make this complicated, use the official method. This is even what Microsoft's own site says to use when you don't have Windows already...
sudo dd if=/path/to/Windows.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M && sync
Where /dev/sdb is the partition of your USB stick. Literally, that's all you do.