How To Make Bootable Usb Windows 8.1
Faustina Bartsch
I'm running into a frustrating issue where I need to create a Windows 10 bootable USB for my Macbook Pro 2023, but every attempt to use Boot Camp Assistant has ended in errors. This has left me in a bit of a bind, as I'm keen to find an alternative method that bypasses Boot Camp altogether. The goal is to successfully prepare a USB drive with Windows 10 installation files, which I plan to use on a PC. If anyone knows how to do this directly on macOS, avoiding Boot Camp issues, I'd really appreciate a simplified guide or tool suggestions to get this done.
There are many ways and tools can be used to make Windows 10 bootable USB installer on Mac, like rufus, WonderISO or Unetbootin. But for me, I used to installed windows 10 in a VM (vmware i think is what I used) on Mac and then created the USB drive from there. I wish that you had known about this method.
Bootcamp assistant app is removed from Apple Silicon on Mac so you can't create Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac with Bootcamp app. I am using WonderISO on my Apple Silicon Mac running the latest macOS Sonoma and it only takes 3 clicks to create a Windows 10 bootable USB on my Mac.
Parallels Desktop, a popular virtualization software for Mac, allows you to run Windows and other operating systems within macOS without needing to reboot. So you can create Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac in a Windows virtual machine.
Firstly, you need to have a copy of the Windows 10 ISO file. Microsoft provides this file for free on their website, intended for users who need to install or reinstall Windows. Download this file to your Mac before proceeding to the next steps.
With the Windows 10 ISO file downloaded, the next crucial step is to obtain a USB drive with sufficient storage space. Typically, a drive with at least 8GB of space is recommended. This ensures that there is enough room for the Windows installation files and any additional updates or drivers you might need to include in the bootable media.
Once Parallels Desktop is installed, you can use it to create a new virtual machine using the Windows 10 ISO file. During the setup process, Parallels will ask where you want to install Windows. At this stage, instead of installing it on a virtual disk, you'll choose your USB drive as the installation destination. This process effectively turns your USB drive into bootable Windows 10 installation media.
However, it's important to note that directly creating Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac through Parallels Desktop might not be as straightforward as using dedicated software for making bootable drives. It takes more time and storage space on your Mac.
If you want to create windows 10 bootable USB on Mac without bootcamp, you can try using a different tool called Etcher. Etcher is a free and open-source tool that allows you to create bootable USB drives from ISO files. Here are the steps to create a Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac using Etcher:
It becomes much challenging to create Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac as Bootcamp is not available on Apple Silicon Mac. Instead, you can borrow another Intel Mac and use Bootcamp to make a bootable Windows 10 USB on Mac.
Step 1: Open the Boot Camp Assistant in the Utilities folder within your Applications folder. Alternatively, use Spotlight search (Cmd + Space) and type "Boot Camp Assistant" to find and open it.
I found a way to install Windows on system without Mac OS system. You will need a USB with a Mac OS system on it. Reason why you will need to format the HD of the mac. With the system off. Turn on the mac. Access the boot up Options menu. Select the USB with the mac os. You will not be loading the Mac Os system. Don't worry. It will load to install the Mac OS system. You click the desktop and select Disk Utility. Choose the hard drive. Select Partition. Select one Partition. Under the Partition window Select Master Boot Record. This will allow you to format the hard drive that is not GUID partition that is for Mac. Once that is done. You are golden. Make sure you have a bootable USB with Windows on it. I used a bootable CD with Windows 7. When selecting the bootable media, it will load windows. You may receive error that unable to use the hard drive. No worries. Select the hard drive, delete and format. and Try again. This should allow you use the hard drive and install windows. No boot camp and no Mac OS on the system. If you need to get drivers. Try using IOBIT Driver Booster. It is free. Or you can view the devices in Device manager to locate the kind of devices that maybe needed to be updated.
@Delaney_Justin Tried this today. My commands seemed to have worked. Files were created on my USB Flash Drive, but still doesn't seem to be recognized by my new PC. Do you have ideas on how to verify that the correct files were created? Maybe I messed up the path part?
@Tonyhu2255
I got me a hand me down iMac 27" late 2015 from work and just used Ventoy to boot into HirenBootcd. From this Windows recovery environment I started an installation for W11 with the bypass method for the requirement check. I had to manually look up all the drivers and the only one that gave me trouble was the audio which I managed to fix after tons of possible options on the sound driver end.
So now I don't use bootcamp and can install all the regular Windows drivers for the hardware. It runs like a charm and I'm surprised as to how capable of a machine it is this way. It runs some emulators and games pretty good as well.
o, for the M1 chip, Boot Camp should work just fine without any additional software like Parallels. However, if you have an older model with an Intel processor (M2/M3), then using Parallels is necessary in order to run Windows alongside macOS seamlessly on your machine. As for obtaining genuine Windows keys from Microsoft Partner Hypest-key
I'm trying to use the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool from the Microsoft Store to make my new 16 GB USB Flash drive bootable to install Windows. It worked the first time that I did this (for Windows 7 Pro 32-bit), but now it keeps failing at the end. (I'm trying to make it bootable with the Windows 7 Pro 64-bit installation DVD ISO.) I've tried to do this on two different computers (Windows XP Pro 32-bit & Windows 7 Pro 32-bit) with the same error:
Files copied successfully. However, we were unable to run bootsect to make the USB device bootable. If you need assistance with bootsect, please click the "Online Help" link above for more information.
Clicking the link just takes me to the Microsoft store homepage, and a search for bootsect from there yields no search results. I've tried to burn a DVD twice using Sonic RecordNow!, but even though it finishes without "errors," the disk is unreadable. :( Does anyone know why this keeps failing and how I may fix it?
This morning I decided to try using it to boot with the Windows 7 Professional 64-bit installer image loaded on it, despite the failure, just to see what would happen. Surprise-surprise, it worked. -_-
To make the USB device bootable, you need to run a tool named bootsect.exe. In some cases, this tool needs to be downloaded from your Microsoft Store account. This may happen if you're trying to create a 64-bit bootable USB device from a 32-bit version of Windows. To download bootsect:
Right-click the link, and then save the bootsect.exe file to the location where you installed the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (e.g. %UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Apps\Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool).
Even with this warning, it still should boot as far as I understand, but the reason it didn't for me was because I had an older BIOS, so what I ended up doing was using the Rufus USB tool with the following settings:
I was trying to create Win7x64 bootable USB stick. Using WinXPx32 SP3, the tool failed for me as described. Luckily, I was able to get access to a Win7x64 machine instead, and there it worked just fine.
it says missing bootmngr or something like that. I'm on ubuntu 12.04 or whatever, the newest one using the gparted to format to NTSC and then unetbootin to install the bootloader, and the iso, then restart. also, i do not know how to use terminal or code..and im also using an external hardrive because this laptop is missing one...
If Windows is what you're trying to install, then Windows 7 bootable USB DVD download tool from Microsoft (Also works on XP) allows you to create a bootable version of windows 7 OS for installing windows through USB drive. To download this utility click Here.
Once downloaded navigate to the folder where the file was downloaded, most likley the Downloads folder, and open terminal there. Just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:
Your computer is set to start up from the system partition on Drive 0. In order to boot to Drive 1 you need to establish a system partition on Drive 1, and then set the system to boot from that drive. To make a system partition on Drive 1, you would need to move/resize the Windows Partition to make room for the (new) system partition.
On your first disk you have the 500 MB EFI partition which you need to boot Windows 10. That is a Windows requirement. So when you remove that disk, with that partition, you cannot boot Windows. You need to recreat that on Disk 2. Perhaps the easiest way is to clone disk 1 to disk 2.
Recognise that any advice that I will try to give on what you want to do is likely to have errors and may cause you to need a reinstall anyhow. I have never tried what you are attempting and I have not taken time to research all the questions that have come to me in writing this. And I confess that I normally use Linux which has its own ways of dealing with Windows. If you have any valuable data on the PC, I would advice you to back it up.
You will have read that UEFI is now the accepted standard for booting PCs and laptops and that is what you have used to get to where you are. I think that a Windows install also adds (emergency?) boot information to that end partition but I think we can ignore that. Effectively you need to shrink the second drive by at least 550 MB and that can be done from within Windows. Hopefully you can shrink it from the front because that is where you need it. You can use gparted to do this which is a live Linux programme that will boot on the PC totally independent of Windows and will run from a USB stick. See .