Windows 10 live usb iso download

Do you own a Netbook or a small form-factor computer without a DVD drive, but want to install Windows (7, 8 or 10) on it? This article explains the different methods to create a bootable USB Windows Setup media.

Before you begin, note that you don’t need any software to create a bootable USB media for UEFI-based computers. For UEFI-based computers, all you need to do to make a USB Windows setup disk is to format the USB drive as FAT32 (instead of NTFS), mount the Windows Setup ISO to a drive, and copy the entire contents of the mounted drive to the USB drive.

This is sufficient to make the drive bootable in UEFI-based computers.

You don’t need to use any of the methods in this article to prepare a USB boot media for UEFI-based computers. The Windows USB/DVD tool formats the disk as NTFS, which means that it will not work on UEFI-based systems. For UEFI-based systems, you need to format the disk as FAT32.

For legacy (BIOS/MBR) systems, follow one of the three methods in this article to create a USB Windows Setup Disk.

Create Bootable USB Flash Drive from ISO Using Windows USB/DVD Download Tool

Microsoft’s Windows USB/DVD Download Tool takes an ISO image and creates a bootable USB device that can be used to install Windows. The utility can create a Windows installation DVD from the ISO file as well.

Download the Windows USB/DVD Download Tool. To copy the ISO image to USB flash drive, ensure that the drive has sufficient disk space. Different OSes have different ISO file sizes. Be sure to use a drive with a capacity of 8 GB minimum, as Windows 10 ISO file sizes grow every build/version; Windows 10 Fall Creators Update ISO size is 4.4 GB.

Although the caption reads “Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool”, it works flawlessly in Windows 10.

Please insert the USB flash drive (or DVD media) into the drive beforehand.

The tool works only for the Windows ISO image downloaded from Microsoft.

Rufus: An Advanced Tool to Create Bootable USB Drives

Also, look at an advanced ISO/DVD to USB tool named Rufus. This utility helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys/pen drives, memory sticks, etc.

Rufus is extremely fast, and this tool can be especially useful for cases where:

• you need to create USB installation media from bootable ISOs (Windows, Linux, UEFI, etc.)
• you need to work on a system that doesn’t have an OS installed
• you need to flash a BIOS or other firmware from DOS
• you want to run a low-level utility

Create USB Bootable Windows Setup Disk without using any software

As said earlier in this article, for UEFI-based computers, all you need to do to make a Windows setup disk is to format the disk as FAT32, mount the ISO to a drive and copy the entire contents of the mounted drive to the USB drive. This is sufficient to make the drive bootable in UEFI-based computers.

For legacy (BIOS/MBR) systems, follow these instructions to create a Windows 10 Setup USB disk.

1. Insert the USB flash disk into the drive.
2. Open admin Command Prompt run the command.
3. Run the command to see the list of drives. Carefully, note down the disk # for your USB media. It’s better to disconnect additional external drives before running this command, for easy identification of the USB drive.
4. In my case, disk 3 is the USB drive, so I type the following command to select the disk: select disk 3
5. Then, run the following command to completely erase the contents of the USB disk: clean

   

6. Then run the following commands: create partition primary select partition 1 active format fs=ntfs quick

   Important note: If your computer supports Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), you should format the USB flash drive as FAT32 rather than as NTFS. To format the partition as FAT32, type , and then click ENTER.

   

7. Once done, run the command, and then type to come out of the Diskpart command environment. Now, Windows reassigns a drive letter ( in this example) for your USB drive.
8. Mount the Windows Setup ISO by double-clicking on it.
   
9. Copy the entire contents of the mounted ISO drive () to your USB flash drive ()
   
10. Switch to the admin Command Prompt window and run the following commands, where is the drive letter of the mounted Windows ISO and is the USB drive letter: H: cd\boot bootsect.exe /nt60 G:

    You’ll see the following output:

    Target volumes will be updated with BOOTMGR compatible bootcode. G: (\\?\Volume{589fd5fb-bd84-11e8-a90e-1866da06b846}) Successfully updated FAT32 filesystem bootcode. Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes.

    The command-line builds the boot sector code in the specified partition.

That’s it! The USB drive is now bootable, and you should be able to install Windows from it.

Hope this guide proved helpful to create a bootable USB Windows Setup disk using various methods.