Making a Windows Installer drive when running an Ubuntu flavour

Lounge
1

Cloning?

Recently I found a new answer at this link at AskUbuntu. It describes how to use dd to create a Windows installer USB drive. In other words, that cloning works.

This was new, and a major improvement, so I tested it, but failed. I think it is true, that it works for the user who wrote the answer, but I guess only in some cases, with rather new computers (and some new UEFI-BIOS systems).

Ventoy

The user also writes that it works with Ventoy, and I think that is correct for most computers (if not all), that can use Windows 11.

mkusb

mkusb is my baby, and the conversation (comments at AskUbuntu), turned out to be a wake-up call for me. I realized that the current Windows iso files have grown so much that they won’t fit into the coat that I provided in mkusb. So I modified it and I’m testing it now.

Your answer was a wake up call for me: I notice that the Windows ISO file is so big now, that I must modify the partitioning on the USB drive in the main (newer) method used by mkusb. It will be modified so that it will ask for a USB drive size of at least 16 GB which will allow for a fair amount of growth (previously the USB drive size must be at least 8 GB).

The new mkusb version 25.1.1 works for me with the current iso files Win11_25H2_English_x64.iso and Win11_25H2_Swedish_x64.iso. If you want to test it at once (while I’m testing it too), get it via

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/unstable

and

sudo apt install mkusb

You are welcome to test it. I think it is enough to check that the computer can boot into the Windows installer and can run the first steps without actually writing anything to the internal drive.

4 Likes
2

I like WoeUSB: GitHub - WoeUSB/WoeUSB: A Microsoft Windows® USB installation media preparer for GNU+Linux

Ubuntu needed a couple packages:

sudo apt install wimtools grub-pc

I run it like this from LiveUSBs:

wget -O '/tmp/woeusb.bash' 'https://github.com/WoeUSB/WoeUSB/releases/download/v5.2.4/woeusb-5.2.4.bash' && chmod +x '/tmp/woeusb.bash'

sudo '/tmp/woeusb.bash' --device ~/'Downloads/en-us_windows_10_iot_enterprise_ltsc_2021_x64_dvd_257ad90f.iso' '/dev/sda'

I have a Dell laptop that can boot EFI as-is from FAT32: For simple installs I format a 1TB USB HDD GPT and 7z x an iso right to it.

1 Like
3

That’s right, we should also remember woeusb.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1097560/woeusb-error-code-256-with-ntfs-formatted-usb/1098185#1098185

For those who want to do things manually and understand what happens, I can also suggest the following link,

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/iso2usb/diy/windows-installer-for-big-files

(When writing this, it seems https://help.ubuntu.com/community is down.)

2 Likes
4

Yes, it’s now a teenager complete with elevated privileges

I did test it using Win11_24H2_EnglishInternational_x64.iso

Writing to USB - 19/20mins + another 8/9mins for “Buffering/tidy up”

The USB booted perfectly and I actually finished the installation because I wanted to see if Windows 11 still allowed a local account (rather than linked to a Microsoft account).
Local account created using oobe\bypassnro

Well done @nio-wiklund

1 Like