Create Windows Xp Bootable Usb Rufus
Sanny Olafeso
When installing a fresh copy of Windows 10, you typically use a USB flash drive to launch the "Windows Setup" wizard to continue the installation process. However, on a device that has a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) instead of the legacy Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), it is crucial to use the correct media for the firmware type to complete the installation successfully.
On Windows 10, you can use at least two tools to create a bootable USB flash drive. You can use the Microsoft Media Creation Tool to download the files onto a removable drive with support for both firmware types (UEFI and legacy BIOS). Or you can use Rufus, a third-party tool that makes it easy to create a flash drive to install Windows with support for UEFI.
Once you complete the steps, the Media Creation Tool will download the files and will create a bootable USB flash drive that you can use to install Windows 10 on computers with support for UEFI and BIOS.
If the Media Creation Tool does not work or you do not want to use it, then you can try Rufus, a popular free third-party tool that allows you to create an installation media with support for UEFI devices. The utility offers two ways to make the installation media, including using an existing ISO file or downloading the image from the Microsoft servers directly from the app.
Once you complete the steps, Rufus will run the automated script to download the Windows 10 ISO file from the Microsoft servers and create a bootable media to install the operating system on a UEFI device without needing the Media Creation Tool.
When you have the USB boot media with support for UEFI systems, you can launch the "Windows Setup" wizard to perform a clean installation of Windows 10 or an in-place upgrade. However, since the "UEFI:NTFS bootloader" does not include a digital signature for secure boot, you must temporarily disable secure boot on the motherboard firmware before you can boot into the setup. Typically, you would do this from within the UEFI, which you can access by hitting one of the function keys (F1, F2, F3, F10, or F12), Esc, or the Delete key, as soon as you start the computer.
The firmware settings are different per manufacturer and even by device model. As a result, check your device manufacturer's support website for more specific instructions. After the installation of Windows 10, you can enable secure boot again.
Mauro Huculak has been a Windows How-To Expert contributor for WindowsCentral.com for nearly a decade and has over 15 years of experience writing comprehensive guides. He also has an IT background and has achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and CompTIA. He has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years."}), " -0-10/js/authorBio.js"); } else console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); Mauro HuculakSocial Links NavigationMauro Huculak has been a Windows How-To Expert contributor for WindowsCentral.com for nearly a decade and has over 15 years of experience writing comprehensive guides. He also has an IT background and has achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and CompTIA. He has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years.
My goal is so simple, the title says it all, but every way I've tried, I've failed. I've read instructions on various sites (besides here) and they all seem to be missing something... this is what I have:
Though I can easily create a bootable Windows 10 USB with Rufus, my goal is more educational: I want to understand what is going on, and what is the source of my failure, and if possible, to make it work.
This is confusing the heck out of me. I know that I'd save myself the trouble if I just stayed with Rufus, but this is not about going simple, but about understanding what is going on. I know a few GUI tools on Linux might solve the problem, but, again, my hope is to do it using the old Unix terminal if possible. if it's not possible, then I'd like to know why.
What way too many people fail to understand, because Linux ISOs are applying this method, but this is essentially a MAJOR HACK CALLED 'ISOHYBRID', is that, in most cases, you cannot simply take an ISO image and copy it byte for byte to a USB drive, and expect that to boot.
That is because the ISO format and the underlying file systems it uses (ISO9660 or UDF) are designed for optical boot, which is a completely different beast from regular HDD or USB boot. For one thing optical media, and therefore (regular) ISO images, don't have a partition table, which is (usually) essential for HDD or USB boot, and they also (usually) don't have a Master Boot record, a.k.a. MBR, which is essential for BIOS boot.
Now, the above only works when the secondary bootloaders (i.e. the ones that comes from Windows and which Rufus doesn't modify) are designed to support both optical and regular boot, which typically mean they need to handle both UDF or ISO9660 and FAT32 or NTFS file systems, as well as the other differences that present themselves when booting from disk vs from optical. But Microsoft did design its bootloader precisely for that, which is the smart thing to do, because, if your target system is UEFI, it means you (usually, as long as the 4 GB max filesize issue of FAT32 doesn't rear its ugly head) don't need a utility to convert an ISO to a bootable USB, but you can just format that USB to FAT32 and copy the ISO files onto it (file copy, not byte copy), and you have a bootable media.
And now that we have gone through all of the above, I can get into a rant and explain why I believe that the Linux distro maintainers, who usually are smarter than that, are actually doing some disservice to their users, even as they are trying to help them:
Almost all recent Linux distros use a MAJOR HACK called "IsoHybrid", where someone managed to figure out a way to make an ISO9660 optical image masquerade as a regular disk image, with a partition table, an MBR and everything... In other words, most Linux ISOs you find these days are abusing the ISO9660 file system to make it look like something it was never designed to look like: a dual disk and optical image.
Obviously, the goal is to create an ISO that can also be used with the dd command, even as an ISO should never be able to work that way. And I agree that, in theory, this sounds awesome, because being able to use a single image for completely different uses should be great for users, but in practice, this leads to issues that are often overlooked:
As far as I know, Microsoft have no plans to switch to the "hack" that is ISOHybrid for their Windows ISOs, which means that you're unlikely to ever be able to use dd to create a bootable USB media from it, and therefore, if you want to create Windows bootable media from an ISO you either:
Used the insights here as motivation to find a way to build a Windows Server 2019 bootable USB drive from Mac OS. The catch is that you need a GPT formatted disk as FAT32 and there are limitations around 4GB max filesize that you need to work around using wimlib-imagex extension. I originally tried using dd utility - but quickly realized that the disk format could not be used for WinOS boot.
Rufus should not be strange to most computer savvy who plays a lot and knows well about their computers and operating systems. Indeed, Rufus is a free and open-source portable application in small size for Microsoft Windows, and it provides experienced consumers with almost everything they need, including two of the most popular features. One is to low-level format a USB flash drive or memory stick, and the other is to create USB installation media from bootable ISO files of Windows, Linux, UEFI, etc.
The Rufus bootable USB feature is used to create bootable USB drives so you can clean install Windows operating system on a none-bootable computer that needs repairing or upgrading to a newer operating system like Windows 11.
The standard procedure of creating a Windows USB drive with Rufus requires an empty clean USB flash drive of 8GB bigger, and a downloaded ISO file of Windows 11 or Windows 10. In short, the USB drive's capacity is at least equal to or larger than the ISO file. Turning a normal USB to bootable will completely remove data if there is any, so make sure that you've transferred the data to another drive to keep it safe if the USB flash drive is a used one.
With those cases in mind, it's useful to create a bootable USB drive so that you can install any supported Windows operating system (Windows 7 and later of both 32-bit and 64-bit) to be able to repair a computer, reinstall OS, or manually do a Windows upgrade.
After staying for a while with the Rufus guide, you should be clear that a Windows bootable USB drive carries a Windows installation file (ISO) so that you can install a fresh, working and stable new Windows OS on your PC and laptop. However, sometimes your purpose of having a bootable USB drive is not for Windows installation, but a simple demand for a portable version of a desired operating system.
In a word, when you want to make a copy of one Windows computer on a USB drive and use the USB drive on any other Windows computer or a Mac machine without taking time to install, there you go. EaseUS portable USB creator can make it happen very seamlessly.
The way of making a portable Windows OS on a USB drive is to migrate the whole Windows OS installation, programs, data, preferences, and user accounts on the computer to the USB drive. So, the requirement of the USB drive's capacity is based on the used space of the system drive. You can check the disk space for the Windows system drive (C:) at first, and find a proper USB drive to start with the below guide to create a portable Windows 11 or Windows 10 USB drive with EaseUS OS2Go.