Creating usb windows 10. Installation Media Creation Tool - Basic utility for reinstalling the system

23.11.2023

At one time, when I was just starting to get acquainted with a personal computer, the question of finding a boot distribution was very acute, and there weren’t many tools for creating one then. However, if you found the utility you needed, most likely it was difficult to learn and required certain knowledge, which was not suitable for ordinary users. Nobody even thought about recording images in a couple of clicks on a flash drive, but times change and the fairy tale becomes reality.

Bootable USB flash drive Windows 10 - offer from Microsoft

I think everyone will agree that it would be fair to start the review with the official method that Microsoft offers us. Of course, it’s not always convenient, but for beginners, as we like to say, it’s just what the doctor ordered.

First of all, we need to download the official Media Creation Tool from the Microsoft website and first stock up on a flash drive with a size of at least 8 gigabytes (not all flash drives with a smaller capacity will fit), well, a couple of minutes of free time and, very preferably, high-speed and unlimited Internet. This is where the first drawback of this method emerges - you will not be able to record a ready-made image, which you could download from a neighbor and record separately on your computer. This utility downloads the latest current distribution and writes it to the installation media.

A few words about the capacity of this useful utility. You must download the utility of the same bitness as your system - this does not depend on the bitness of the distribution you are creating, which you want to write to a USB drive for installing the operating system from it in the future

So, Media Creation Tools is not only a way to create installation media, it is a real assistant in the transition to Windows 10. But there is no point in considering this functionality of the utility in the context of our tasks, and a clean installation from scratch is the key to a good impression from the new Microsoft operating system without glitches and brakes.

That's it, enough of the introduction - let's move on to the most important thing. We launch the “Windows 10 Setup Program” and they ask us, “What do we want to do?” Should we update our computer or create installation media for another computer?... we are of course interested in the second option, select it and click the “Next” button

The next step is to select the language and system architecture (this is what I wrote about at the very beginning - here we select the bit depth of the installation kit). If you are not sure what exactly is right for you, you can rely on the utility and check the “Use recommended settings for this computer” checkbox. As a rule, the optimal settings are set relatively correctly.

The last step in preparing the installation flash drive is to choose what we want to do with the distribution? - just save to your computer (marked in the picture below), or write to a flash drive. Personally, I don’t quite understand why we need to save an ISO image to a computer if, using this utility, we cannot prepare an installation package with an already downloaded distribution kit (by the way, which was created by the same MediaCreationTool)

All that remains is to wait for Windows 10 to download and burn to the USB flash drive. It all depends on the speed of your Internet connection and the performance of the flash drive that you wanted to make bootable with Windows 10. (If you choose a good drive with USB 3 and connect it to the appropriate ports on your computer, this process will be significantly reduced and recording will take a matter of minutes)

Rufus is the best third-party solution for bootable media

The time has come for my favorite method for creating a bootable USB flash drive for installing Windows 10. This software is capable of more, but now we are considering it in the context of creating a “tens” installation kit.

If the previous method did not suit you or you have your own ready-made ISO image with the distribution kit of the operating system you need, then there is nothing easier than writing it to a flash drive.

In the “Device” item, select your flash drive, at the very bottom of the window with the program we find “Create a boot disk” and, by clicking on the image of the CD, select the location of our ISO image with Windows 10.

Click “Start” and wait until the image is written to the flash drive.

Pay attention to the item “Partition scheme and system interface type” - by default, Rufus itself selects the best option. If you do not understand these symbols, then if the system installation is unsuccessful, just try another option - it should help.

Creating a bootable Windows 10 USB flash drive without programs

This method is only suitable for relatively new computers and laptops, the motherboard of which is equipped with UEFI software (and this is usually a computer no older than 3-4 years) and they support this very hated EFI boot.

This can be said to be an option for the “lazy”; we only need two ingredients - a flash drive of suitable size formatted in FAT32 (it is very important) and the image itself with Windows 10. We just need to transfer all the image files to the root of the flash drive and that’s it. The image can be mounted using Daemon Tools or standard methods (Windwos 10 can work with ISO images right out of the box)

That's all, now you can install Windows 10 from the newly created flash drive (provided that you have UEFI boot mode active). It is logical that we need to select booting from a USB drive in the Boot Menu of the motherboard.

Ultra ISO - a proven way to create a bootable USB flash drive

Creating a bootable flash drive using UltraISO - this method can be classified as “old-fashioned”; I don’t even remember when I started using this program to “slice” an image onto a USB drive, but over time more convenient and more functional utilities have appeared. But do not forget that this program has a wider application than the banal recording of an image on a flash drive.

The process itself can be broken down into a couple of steps:

Open the Windows 10 ISO image in the program (I spent a long time trying to figure out where to select it when writing to a flash drive, it turned out to be so simple)
In the “Bootboot” menu, select the “Burn Hard Disk Image...” item, then select the media and press start; in most cases, you don’t need to configure anything.

WinSetupFromUSB is one of the best in the business

Let's move on to another program, the purpose of which is only to slicing system images (not only Windows 10) to USB drives, the utility is called WinSetupFromUSB

A bootable Windows 10 flash drive is created very simply here - we select the media on which we want to burn the ISO image and check the box that we want to put on it. Click on the button with “three dots” next to the marked item and select our distribution - click the GO button and go drink tea, nothing more is required from you.

Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

Another simple method from Microsoft for recording Window 7 to a USB flash drive, but these instructions are also perfect for Windows 10 - everything works great. I don’t see much sense in this method - there are other simpler methods that do not require installing additional programs, but this method has a right to life. Unfortunately, the utility is only in English, but this does not cause any difficulties in communicating with the interface.

Step 1. Select an ISO image with your Windows 10 distribution (If this is some kind of assembly, then be prepared for the fact that this utility will not be able to create a bootable installation kit for you)

Step 2. It is determined where we want to burn our image - to a DVD disc or to a USB device, we have not been interested in discs for a long time, and the topic of the article is a bootable flash drive, not discs...

Step 3 and 4. We insert our USB drive, select it in the list and click the green “Begin copying” button. We are patient and wait until the files are written to the drive.

With this, we have smoothly completed the last, sixth method of creating a bootable USB flash drive with Windows 10 on board. In the following notes I will try to explain in detail how to use such a tool in practice, as always in pictures and in as much detail as possible.

P.S. Well, friends, I hope you have decided for yourself which option for recording a distribution on a flash drive is best for you. I am sure that for a single case like “Downloaded for myself, installed and forgot” - this is an option with the Media Creation Tool. For everything else there is Rufus, which does not require installation. But this is just my, subjective opinion. All the best!

Windows 10 appeared not so long ago, but almost everyone has already switched to it. If you still have an old version of the OS, for example, Windows 7, you might be wondering how and where to download Windows 10 to a flash drive. This will be discussed in this article.

Where to download Windows 10

To do this, visit the official Microsoft website and download a special utility called Media Creation Tool. She will be able to download a Windows 10 image for a flash drive and help write it to any drive, for example, USB or DVD, after which the operating system will be installed from it.

By the way, the M.Video store offers lucrative discount coupons!

Creating a Bootable USB Drive

So, you downloaded the Media Creation Tool utility by clicking on one of the links and now you want to understand how to actually write Windows to the drive using it. It's quite simple:

Use a storage device with a capacity of at least 8 GB!

Next, you will select the drive inserted into your computer, and the official Windows ISO image will be downloaded and written to it. At the end of the process, the drive will be completely ready for installing the operating system from it.

Conclusion

Burning the operating system to a USB drive is quite simple, since there is a special utility. This will take a minimum of your time.

How to burn Windows 10 to a USB flash drive

Installing Windows 10 from a flash drive is the simplest, and in most cases, the only available method. After all, DVDs are a thing of the past and finding a modern computer with a disk drive is almost more difficult than finding an iPhone charger in 2008. In order to burn an ISO image to a flash drive and make a bootable drive, you can use one of the available methods. The three most convenient options are described below.

Creating a bootable USB flash drive with Windows 10 in Rufus

The simplest and most convenient method of burning an ISO disk image of Windows 10 to a flash drive is offered by the free Rufus program. To avoid installing it, download the portable version, which is ready to use the first time you run it.

To install Windows 10, you will need a flash drive with a capacity of at least 4 GB, although some distributions (usually containing installers for several OS versions) may require more, from 8 GB. Make sure that the drive does not contain any valuable information, as it will have to be formatted.

Connect the USB flash drive to your computer and run the Rufus program as administrator.

If several drives are connected to your computer, find the flash drive you need in the first item of the application.

In the corresponding menu, set the boot method by selecting “Disk or ISO image”.

Next, click the “Select” button and navigate to the folder containing the ISO disk image with the system.

Select the disk partitioning scheme on which the OS will be installed. For most modern computers, you should choose GPT, while MBR is an option for older machines that do not have UEFI support. If you will install the system on a separate drive, completely dedicated to the OS, and the PC is not very old, choose GPT.

In the “Format Options” section, select the file system type of the bootable USB flash drive with ISO image. By default, FAT32 is installed, but this type of file system does not support files larger than 4 GB. For official assemblies (not repacks) this does not matter, but for alternative ones it may be important.

If you select NTFS, in the UEFI (BIOS) of the computer on which you will install Windows, you must disable Secure Boot, otherwise the installer will not start.

After selecting all the parameters, click “Start” and wait until the image is written to the USB flash drive. When the ISO is burned, the system will notify you that the boot drive is ready.

Creating a bootable USB flash drive with Windows 10 Installation Media Creation Tool

Windows 10 Installation Media Creation Tool is an application from Microsoft for creating bootable drives with the latest version of the official OS build. You can download it from the Microsoft website. When using this method, keep in mind that you need a good Internet connection. The installer image will be downloaded from the official website. You also need to have memory on the system disk to load the OS installer.

Launch the Media Creation Tool program and accept the license agreement (although there is a legend, you also need to read it).

Select the second option from the options: “Create installation media...”.

Set the necessary parameters for the created ISO image. You can select the desired system language, its version (although only “ten” is available), as well as the bit depth. To make a universal bootable USB flash drive, use the “Both” option (32 and 64 bits).

In the installer type selection menu, check the box next to “USB flash memory device.” You can also choose to create an ISO image for burning through Rufus, but this option only makes sense if you need to install the OS on an old PC, or get an official distribution for other purposes.

Select the drive on which you will make a bootable USB flash drive with an ISO image.

Wait until the system installation files are downloaded. Download speed depends on your internet connection, so downloading may take time.

Wait while the Media Creation Tool processes the downloaded installer files and writes them to the USB flash drive.

After the drive creation process is completed, the program will notify you about it.

Windows USB/DVD Download Tool

Windows USB/DVD Download Tool is another simple utility from Microsoft that allows you to make a bootable drive. The download link from the official website is located. Unlike the previous one, it does not download files on its own, working with pre-saved ISO images. Despite its original purpose for Windows 7, it is also suitable for the tenth version of the system. To burn ISO to a flash drive, follow a few simple steps. Select a flash drive and format

Wait until the program formats the flash drive and writes the operating system distribution files to it. After this, the drive is ready for installing the OS on computers.

Of the above methods, the easiest option for installing the official Tens distribution is Windows 10 Installation Media Creation Tool. This program downloads the latest version of the OS, exactly the same as what is sold in the “boxed” versions of the license. To activate it on a new PC, a key is enough.

If the Internet does not allow you to download the entire image now, or you need your own OS build (for example, with cut out unnecessary elements, preinstalled settings, drivers and programs), then the best option is the Windows USB/DVD Download Tool. It is simple, fast and very effective.

Rufus is the most powerful tool, but a beginner may find it difficult. The advantages of this program are the ability to configure the drive type, file system, and type of disk layout. In cases where official tools do not help (old PC, no UEFI, disk partitioned in MBR), it can become almost a panacea.

Therefore, if, after choosing the right boot drive, the installation of the system still does not start, you can experiment with the settings, or write 2 or 3 flash drives at once in different configurations, to select the option that will work.

The article describes in detail the installation of Windows 10 from a flash drive on a computer and laptop. At the end of the material, solutions to frequently encountered problems are provided. Before you start preparing a removable flash drive, look through articles about resetting the Windows 10 operating system. They are often an easy way out of the situation.

There are many ways to create a bootable flash drive, and some of them are discussed in other materials, so we won’t dwell on the details. We will briefly show how the problem is solved using the tools provided by Microsoft.

1. Download the Media Creation Tool utility from the company’s official website using the link - https://www.microsoft.com/ru-ru/software-download/windows10

2. Run the program and wait until the preparatory stage is completed.

3. Accept the terms of its use.

4. Specify the second item responsible for creating a bootable USB device based on flash memory.

5. Decide on the interface language, release and architecture of the downloaded distribution.

To get the architecture (bit depth), go to “Settings”, go to the “System” section, go to the “About the system” tab and pay attention to the line “System type”, it indicates the bit depth of the Windows 10 you are using.

6. Select the first option, since we are interested in a bootable flash drive. The second is relevant if you reinstall the operating system often. Once you download the image, you can record it as many times as you like.

7. For the second case, specify the location on your hard drive where you want to save the resulting ISO file.

After downloading it using third-party software, the image can be written to a flash drive.

Deploying an image

Only owners of new computers, laptops and motherboards with UEFI can do without third-party software. To do this, the drive must be in the FAT32 file system.

1. Launch the application and select the target device from the first drop-down list.

2. Specify the layout of logical volumes and the type of system interface used:

“MBR for PCs with BIOS or UEFI-CSM” - for older computers that use BIOS, or those machines that use an outdated partition scheme;
for new systems with a modern partition scheme - “GPT for computers with UEFI”.

3. Cluster size and volume label are optional.

4. Check "Quick Format" to clear the table of contents to save time.

5. Click “Start” and wait until the files are written to the portable digital media.

Installation process

Since, due to the installation of the operating system, the logical volume where it will be stored will have to be formatted, take care of the information located on it. In particular, program settings, saved projects, documents and saves for games, all the contents of the Desktop and My Documents.

Below is a detailed step-by-step instruction of the process with the most detailed explanations of each step and point, so that a novice user can easily cope with the task.

1. Insert the USB flash drive into the USB port of your computer and reboot it.

2. Using the Boot-menu, select the USB flash drive as the boot disk.

The menu is called up differently on different motherboards and laptops, see the documentation for your device.

3. After the message appears: “Press any key to boot from CD or DVD,” click on any button.

4. The first window after pre-loading will prompt you to decide on the interface language of the operating system being installed, the date and time format, as well as the default keyboard layout.

You don’t have to change anything, Russian is selected everywhere.

5. On the next screen, click “Install”.

6. Now a window will open with a field for entering the license key. If it is not picked up automatically, click “I don’t have a product key.”

7. If the license was picked up based on the combination of your hardware components, the following window may not appear. Otherwise, indicate the OS edition that you had before. If there is no license, choose any one based on your personal needs.

8. Read all the clauses of the license agreement and accept it, because there is nowhere to go. Be sure to read: it contains many interesting points regarding the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information.

9. Select the Windows 10 installation type.

Update - this will save all settings, programs, drivers and personal files, and the data of the old operating system will be transferred to the Windows.old directory.

Custom - after completing the process, you will get a clean Windows 10 without garbage. Allows you to change the structure of the drive's file system. Used when installing the OS on a blank hard drive without an operating system. We will consider this method as the most used and optimal.

A window will open to select a logical volume, which will subsequently become a system volume. Most likely, you will have 2-3 more volumes than you are used to seeing through Explorer or a file manager. To all known disks, several more with a capacity of several hundred megabytes will be added:

recovery - for resuscitation of Windows 10, it stores an image that allows you to reinstall the operating system in a matter of minutes or return the laptop to its factory state, as if no one had ever worked on it;
systemic and basic. The volume of the latter will be several tens of megabytes.

10. Specify the volume that will subsequently be used to store Windows 10 files, and click “Format”.

11. Confirm erasing all information on it.

12. Specify this logical partition to write OS files to.

If errors occur, delete the volume and then create it again in an unallocated area with the same size.

If you do not format it, all old files will remain on the disk and will be transferred to the Windows.old directory, including your personal documents stored on the Desktop, program settings, game saves, licenses.

When you select a volume other than the current system volume for installation, two operating systems will appear on the computer with the ability to load the one you need (including automatic selection after a specified time has elapsed).

13. After creating the file system and selecting the volume, click “Next”.

At this stage, the installation files located on the flash drive will be copied to the specified logical partition and unpacked. Then the OS with updates is installed.

14. The next stage is optimizing Windows and preparing it for the first launch.

It can take several tens of minutes, especially on a weak computer or with little free disk space. Do not restart your PC at this stage, just wait until it completes.

15. The next step is “Basics”, and the first item in it is selecting a region, then – keyboard layout.

16. A request to connect to the network will appear; you can skip this step or configure the Internet.

17. If you have set up an Internet connection, you will be prompted to select an optimization option for Windows 10:

for business (organization);
for personal use.

For a home laptop or computer, choose the second option.

18. Account setup.

If you have an active connection to the global network, you will be prompted to create a new one or log in to a Microsoft account. To add a local account, click “Offline account...”. If there is no Internet, only the second option is available.

On newer versions of Windows 10, after setting a password for your account, you must enter a security question and answer to recover your password.

19. In the window for applying a PIN code to protect your account, set it at your personal discretion.

20. After signing in to your Microsoft account, you will be asked if you need to save files to the OneDrive cloud storage.

21. The final stage of installing Windows 10 is the configuration of privacy settings - the same spy functions of the “Dozens”: transfer of location information to Microsoft servers, speech recognition, help and hints center, telemetry, search and a number of other tools that monitor your activity, to select personalized advertising.

It's best to turn them off, but use your own discretion.

22. Further actions do not require your intervention. The installer deploys standard applications and somehow optimizes them.

If nothing changes after an hour or two, try starting the process again, while changing the PC boot mode in the BIOS.

The desktop will appear soon. After this, you can install the necessary applications, updates for the operating system, drivers, and configure the OS based on your personal preferences. Download drivers from the official device support website (video card, motherboard and sound card). The same goes for a laptop.

After setting up, installing all the necessary software, cleaning up debris, personalizing Windows 10 and a couple of hours or days of working in it, it is recommended to create an image to restore the OS. It will help you get a completely ready-to-use operating system in a matter of minutes.

After the first reboot of the computer, the installation may begin again. If this happens, change the priority of boot devices in the BIOS: move the HDD to the first place or on the black screen with the inscription “Press any key...” do not press anything until it disappears.

When installing the OS on a solid-state drive that will be used as a system disk, you must ensure that it is called “Disk 0”. In this case, the bootloader will be located on it. If this is not done, the bootloader will be located on the hard drive (or one of them), and when the HDD is disconnected, the operating system will not boot. This is done in two ways:

putting SSD first in the list of boot devices;
connecting SSD to SATA 1 cable.

At the selection stage, an error may occur with a notification that it is impossible to install the OS on it due to the fact that the volume contains an MBR table, and Windows can only be installed on a GPT partition. There are two options:

change the computer startup type in the BIOS from UEFI to Legacy (preferable due to ease of implementation);
convert the disk to GPT.

The boot screen may show you two Windows 10 options to choose from. The unnecessary one is deleted through the system configurator: run “msconfig” in the search line, in the “Download” tab, select the unnecessary line and click “Delete”.

Many users get used to the drive letters and create bookmarks on them in file managers; after reinstalling the OS, they may change. The system disk will always be designated by the letter “C”, “A” and “B” - reserved for magnetic drives, and then the system assigns letter labels to the disks in the order in which they appear in the English alphabet. Volume letters are changed through the Disk Management tool.

Execute the command “diskmgmt.msc” in the search line, call the appropriate command through the volume’s context menu and select the appropriate label. If you need to swap letters, temporarily assign one of the drives to a free one so that the one you are using is free.

At the stage of selecting the volume where the files will be copied and unpacked, or before it the installer
may ask for drivers for the SATA controller. In this case, you need to download the archive with the driver from the support site for your equipment, place it on a flash drive, and when prompted, specify this archive. It should contain an inf file.

There are quite a few ways to prepare a USB flash drive for installing Windows 10, I will look at the most popular ones:

Attention!!! For any of the described methods, you need to prepare a USB flash drive - transfer all data from it or be prepared for all information on it to be deleted.

Make a bootable USB flash drive for Windows 10 using copying.

This method is extremely simple and requires a minimum of action from you, BUT it is only suitable for those who want to install Windwos 10 on a computer/laptop with UEFI instead of BIOS.

UEFI (Unified EFI Interface) is a standard firmware interface for computers that replaces BIOS. It is quite easy to distinguish it from BIOS; it has a graphical interface + mouse cursor control is available.

If you are planning to install Windows 10 on a computer/laptop with a BIOS or you do not know what is used on it, it is better to use any other method described below.

For this method we will need:

Installing Windows USB/DVD Download Tool does not hide any pitfalls, a few clicks of “Next” and a shortcut with the utility on your desktop. Next, all that remains is to launch the utility.

You will see a window in which you need to select the ISO image of Windows 10. Click the "Brouse" button and specify the path to the image. After that, click "Next".

Select the USB flash drive you want to burn Windows 10 to.

A message will appear stating that all information from the flash drive will be deleted, click "Erase USB Device".

Then another window with similar content will appear, click “Yes”.

Within a few minutes your USB flash drive will be prepared. As a result, you will receive a line saying that everything is ready "Bootable USB device created successfully".

Now you can close the program window.

How to make a bootable USB flash drive using the UltraISO program.

Before this, I looked at ways to create a bootable USB flash drive using Windows tools; in this method, I suggest using the third-party program UtraISO.

For this method you will need:

1) USB flash drive with a capacity of at least 6 GB;

2) UltraISO program;

Download and install the program Ultra ISO. We are happy with the free version, so select "Free Trial" on the website

Select the Russian version and download it.

Installing the program comes down to a few clicks of the “Next” button, so I think no one will have any problems with this. Launch UltraISO and select "Trial period".

After that, select "File" - "Open".

Specify the Windows 10 ISO image and click "Open"

Check that your USB flash drive is indicated in the “Disk Drive” field and click “Burn”.

A window will appear warning that all information from the USB drive will be deleted, click “Yes”.

Then you need to wait a few minutes while the UltraISO program prepares a bootable USB flash drive. As a result, in the program window you should see “Recording complete!”

Now you can start installing Windows 10 from a flash drive.

Making a Windows 10 installation USB flash drive using the command line.

I bring to your attention the most ascetic way to create a Windows 10 installation flash drive - using the command line. For this method we will need:

1) USB flash drive with a capacity of at least 6 GB;

Run Command Prompt as Administrator.

Below is a print screen of the command line indicating the commands for creating a bootable USB flash drive. Take each step step by step. Below is a description of why this or that command is needed.

diskpart- an interpreter that allows you to manage objects (disks, partitions or volumes).

list disk- viewing disks/flash drives connected to the computer.

select disk 1- select the disk with which further actions will be performed. You must indicate the number that the OS assigned to your USB drive. Be careful with your choice.

clean- disk cleanup

create partition primary- creating a partition on a flash drive

select partition 1- select the first section.

active- mark the selected section as active

format fs=NTFS- formatting the partition in NTFS (the process is quite lengthy and can take dozens of minutes).

assign- drive letter assignment

exit- exit

Now you need to unzip the Windows 10 ISO image.

And copy everything to a USB drive.

In this article, I described 5 different ways on how you can make a bootable USB flash drive for Windows 10, you just have to choose which method suits you and use it.

views

Save VKontakte