Create windows boot usb from linux

Бывают случаи, когда вам нужно записать Windows на флешку в Linux, например, когда вы хотите поставить эту систему второй для использования специализированных программ, или вам нужно переустановить операционку своим знакомым. Или же есть пользователи Linux, которые решили вернуться на Windows, но единственную флешку уже перезаписали под Linux LiveUSB.

Загрузочная флешка Windows в Linux создается достаточно просто. Я предлагаю несколько способов решения этой проблемы. Все их я перечислил ниже.

Загрузочную флешку можно создать с помощью терминала или специальных графических утилит. Настоятельно рекомендую отформатировать флешку в Fat32 (или Exfat) перед использованием любого из предложенных методов. Форматирование можно выполнить через Gparted, сfdisk+mkfs или через usb stick formatter (форматирование USB флеш накопителя).

Способ 1. Утилита USB Image Write

Для создания флешки можно воспользоваться утилитой Запись образа на USB. В некоторых дистрибутивах она уже предустановленна (Ubuntu, Mint и др.):

Выбрать образ в графе Write image образ и в поле to выбрать флешку. Далее нажимаем Write.

Способ 2. Утилита WoeUSB

Пожалуй, это самый простой способ создания. Установка в Ubuntu выполняется с помощью таких команд:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

sudo apt update

sudo apt install woeusb

Откройте утилиту в меню приложений:

Интерфейс простой. Нажмите на кнопку Обзор со значком папки и выберите образ. Target device это флешка, на которую будет идти запись, если у вас их несколько выберите нужную. Ещё есть поле File system, где нужно выбрать какую файловую систему будете использовать. Рекомендую FAT. Затем нажмите Install и дождитесь окончания.

При появлении ошибки с кодом 256 Source media is currently mounted, размонтируйте образ ISO с Windows, если вы его смонтировали. При ошибке Target device is currently busy, извлеките флешку, затем снова подключите её. Если не сработало, попробуйте отформатировать её.

Способ 3. Терминал и Gparted

Положите образ в домашнюю папку и переименуйте его в windows.iso во избежание проблем с пробелами. Затем перейдите в терминале в домашнюю папку

cd ~

Запустите терминал через главное меню или с помощью сочетания клавиш Ctrl + Alt + T затем используйте команду dd для записи образа на флешку:

dd if=/windows.iso of=/dev/sdX

Замените X на букву вашей флешки! Узнать её можно через Gparted. В правом верхнем углу есть кнопка переключения дисков:

Тот диск который соответствует размеру вашей флешки и есть ваша флешка. В моем случае флешка на 32 гб это /dev/sdb. Значит команда будет иметь вид:

dd if=/windows.iso of=/dev/sdb

Дождитесь окончания записи и извлеките флешку.

Выводы

Как видите, создание загрузочной флешки Windows в Linux не представляет сложности. Это были все способы, которые я знаю. Если они вам помогли, напишите об этом. Если вы знаете еще способы, обязательно напишите о них в комментариях!

Обнаружили ошибку в тексте? Сообщите мне об этом. Выделите текст с ошибкой и нажмите Ctrl+Enter.

Об авторе

Здравствуйте, я изучаю Linux и обладаю хорошими знаниями английского.

Update for 2023 using Ubuntu 22.04LTS desktop and creating a Windows 10 installation bootable USB; I doubt very much the 17 other answers missed this, so I think it must be much easier in 22.04 than it was in previous Ubuntu versions. Please note that this approach requires that your system (Bios) can boot into a NTFS formatted drive. If that’s not the case, look at the other answers below. You may be able to find out if your hardware can boot into NTFS by looking at its documentation. Older hardware will likely not be able to boot into NTFS, and even some newer ones as the comments show.

I couldn’t get WoeUSB to work in 22.04 and judging by the recent review scores, it’s probably not working for most people now.

It seems you can now do it without any special tools. You do need to install gparted which isn’t installed by default in Ubuntu, but in my view it’s a useful tool to have anyway.

Note that I have done this for Windows 10 and confirm it works; I’ve included the Windows 11 download link in this answer but haven’t tested that.

1. Download the Windows iso from Microsoft

Download at:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10ISO (Windows 10)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows11 (Windows 11)

Save the iso file somewhere sensible (eg Downloads). Note (in case your internet is metered, limited or slow), that it is about 5-6GB.

2. install gparted from the software store

Just search for gparted and it’s a simple installation from Ubuntu Software.

3. Format your USB drive using gparted:

Be very careful to select the correct device at the top — whatever you format will lose any data on it.

Click ‘Device’ then ‘Create Partition Table’.

In the drop-down menu, use ‘gpt’ for the partition type, note the warning and click ‘Apply’.

Click on the ‘Partition’ menu, then select ‘New’.

In the dialog box, chose ‘NTFS’ as the filesystem. (You can’t use FAT32 as that only supports files up to 4GB and one of the files is over 5GB.)

Click the green tick at the top to enact your changes — and your USB should be formatted and ready to go.

4. Open the iso to see the files and copy across

Navigate to your .iso download.

Right-click on the file and a pop-up should give you the option ‘Open With Disk Image Mounter’ — select that (in fact it is usually the default option if you double-click).

Your iso should now open as if it were a separate drive, and appear in the dock like a hard drive.

Double-click on the iso drive in the dock — it should open with a bunch of files and folders.

Copy the entire contents of that drive to your USB.

5. Set a boot flag for the USB

In gparted, select the USB device

Click on the graphical display of the partition you created.

Click on the ‘Partition’ menu at the top and select ‘Manage Flags’

Place a tick in the ‘boot’ box

That’s it!

This tutorial is going to show you an easy way to create a Windows 10 bootable USB on Linux. I use Ubuntu 20.04 as an example. The method applies to any Linux distribution. I use Windows to do online banking because my bank doesn’t support Linux and sometimes play games that can’t run on Linux.

What you need

• A computer running Linux
• A USB flash drive at least 8GB
• Windows 10 ISO

Download Windows 10 ISO

First, you should download Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft official download link. Note that you might not be able to download the ISO from this link on a Windows computer. This download link is visible to users on Linux computer. Once downloaded, follow the instructions below.

Note: It’s recommended to download the Windows 10 April 2018 update ISO, because the October Update ISO contains a file that is larger than 4GB, which can not be copied to a FAT32 partition.

Update: Microsoft doesn’t allow you to download the Windows 10 April 2018 Update ISO from their website anymore. You can download the ISO via this link: Win10 1803 English x64 ISO

Creating a Windows 10 Bootable USB for UEFI Firmware

This method works for UEFI firmware and is very simple. You create a GUID partition table on your USB stick, create a FAT32 file system on it, and then mount Windows 10 ISO image and copy those Windows 10 files to your USB stick and you are done. The following is a step-by-step guide.

First, install GParted partition editor on your Linux distribution. Ubuntu users run the following command.

sudo apt install gparted

Then insert your USB stick to your computer. Make sure you back up important files in your USB stick if there’s any. Next, launch Gparted. You will need to enter your password in order to use GParted.

Select your USB stick from the drop-down menu on the upper-right corner. My USB stick is /dev/sdb. Yours may be different.

If there’s a key icon after the partition name, that means the partition is mounted. Make sure all partitions on your USB stick are unmounted. To unmount a partition, simply right-click on it and select unmount.

Next, on the menu bar, select Device > Create partition table.

Choose GPT as the partition table type and click Apply.

Then right-click on the unallocated space and select New to create a new partition.

Change file system type from ext4 to fat32 and click Add.

Note: The install.wim file in Windows 10 October 2018 update ISO is 4.1G, so if you downloaded this ISO image, you need to change ext4 to ntfs. If you downloaded Windows 10 April 2018 Update ISO, which contains a 3.9G size install.wim file, you can change ext4 to fat32

Update: It is my observation that my NTFS formatted USB stick isn’t bootable on my old laptop, which was bought in 2012. However, it is bootable on my desktop computer, which was bought in 2017. It has a graphical UEFI firware (I can use my mouse to configure firmware settings).

Next, click the green check button on the toolbar to apply this operation. Once that’s done, close GParted (This is important), then find your Windows 10 ISO in file manager. Open it with disk image mounter.

Open the mounted file system. Select all files and folders and copy them to your USB stick.

Sometimes the file manager on Ubuntu hangs and it seems that the copy operation has stopped. Actually it’s working, just be patient. When you see a check mark, it means the copy operation has finished.

If your file manager doesn’t have the Disk image mounter in the context menu, then you can use the following commands to mount. The first command will create a mount point for Windows 10 ISO and the second command will mount Windows 10 ISO under that mount point.

sudo mkdir /mnt/windows10/

sudo mount -t auto -o loop /path/to/window-10-iso /mnt/windows10/

Now in your file manager, go to /mnt/windows10/ and copy all files and folders to your USB stick.

Once the file and folders are copied, your windows 10 bootable USB is created! You can shut down your computer, boot it from this USB stick and install Windows 10 in UEFI mode. Keep in mind that you may need to disable compatibility support module (CSM) in the firmware in order to boot in UEFI mode. You may also need to remove USB stick from your computer and insert it back in order for the firmware to detect the boot loader on your USB stick.

Boot Windows 10 ISO Installer without USB (BIOS & UEFI)

Ever wondered if you can boot Windows 10 ISO installer without a USB flash drive? Yes, you can do it with GRUB2, which is the standard boot loader on Linux.

GRUB2 can not boot Windows 10 ISO directly. You need to create a separate NTFS partition on your hard disk or SSD with a partition editor like GParted and extract the Windows 10 ISO to that partition. Download the Windows 10 ISO file. The latest Windows 10 ISO file is 5.8G. The new NTFS partition should be at least 7G and it should not be used to store any other files.

Then find your Windows 10 ISO in file manager. Open it with disk image mounter.

Open the mounted file system. Select all files and folders and copy them to the NTFS partition.

Sometimes the file manager on Ubuntu hangs and it seems that the copy operation has stopped. Actually, it’s working. Just be patient. When you see a checkmark, it means the copy operation has finished.

Next, open up a terminal window and edit the /etc/grub.d/40_custom file with a text editor such as Nano.

sudo nano /etc/grub.d/40_custom

In this file, we can add custom entries to the GRUB boot menu. In this case, we want to add an entry to boot the Windows 10 installer. If your computer still uses the traditional BIOS firmware, then add the following lines in this file.

menuentry "Windows-10-Installer.iso" {
  set root=(hd0,6)
  insmod part_msdos
  insmod ntfs
  insmod ntldr
  #uncomment the following line if your computer has multiple hard drives. 
  #drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}
  ntldr /bootmgr
}

My NTFS partition is the 6th partition on my first disk, so I use (hd0,6) as the root. You can run sudo parted -l command to check your NTFS partition number. If your computer has multiple hard drives, use the drivemap command to set the partition (hd0,6) as the first hard disk, so Windows will be able to boot.

If your computer uses UEFI firmware, then add the following text in this file.

menuentry "Windows-10-Installer.iso" {
  set root=(hd0,6)
  insmod part_gpt
  insmod ntfs
  insmod chain
  chainloader /efi/boot/bootx64.efi
}

Save and close the file. (Press Ctrl+O, then press Enter to save a file in Nano text editor. Press Ctrl+X to exit.)

Then update GRUB boot menu.

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

or

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Next, set GRUB to boot the Windows 10 installer for the next boot with the following command.

sudo grub-reboot Windows-10-Installer.iso

or

sudo grub2-reboot Windows-10-Installer.iso

Unplug all your external USB storage devices, then reboot your computer. GRUB will choose the Windows 10 installer.

GRUB2 can also boot Linux ISO files stored on the hard drive, so you don’t need to create Linux live USB.

• How to Boot ISO Files From GRUB2 Boot Loader

Creating a Windows 10 Bootable USB for Legacy BIOS Using WoeUSB

WoeUSB is a fork of WinUSB. Both of them are open-source software (licensed in GPL) for making Windows bootable USB sticks on Linux platform, but the latter hasn’t been updated since 2012. You may be wondering why it’s named WoeUSB. The author said it’s a GNU convention to abbreviate software that support Windows to “woe”.

To install WoeUSB on Ubuntu 14.04/16.04/17.04, you can use the following PPA. Simply open up a terminal window and run the following commands one by one. Other Linux distro users can compile this software by following the instructions on the Github project page.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

sudo apt update

sudo apt install woeusb

This PPA contains many other software. If you don’t need them, you can now remove this PPA from your system.

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

sudo apt update

You can launch WoeUSB from Unity Dash or your application menu.

You can also start it from command line with:

woeusbgui

It’s very easy to use the WoeUSB GUI. Select Windows ISO image and your target USB device. Make sure your data on the USB device is backed up before hitting the Install button.

Then wait for the installation to complete.

Once done, you can use the bootable USB to install Windows 10 on your computer.

How to Use WoeUSB From the Command Line

First, find the device name of your USB stick using the following command.

lsblk

Mine is /dev/sdb. Make sure your USB is unmounted with the following command. Replace /dev/sdb1 with your own partition name.

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

Then create a bootable Windows 10 USB like below. Red texts shoudl be adapted to your own ISO file name and USB device name. The -v (--verbose) option will give more detailed output.

sudo woeusb -v --device windows-10.iso /dev/sdb

In my test, the Windows 10 USB created with WoeUSB can boot in both legacy and UEFI mode on my old computer. On my new computer, it can boot in legacy mode but failed in UEFI mode. I don’t know the exact reason, but it’s probably because of bug in this software.

That’s it! I hope this tutorial helped you create windows 10 bootable USB on Ubuntu or any Linux distribution. As always, if you found this post useful, then subscribe to our free newsletter to get new tutorials.

Ubuntu has already an application called Startup Disk Creator, but this can only be used to make Linux bootable USB drives. To make a Windows bootable USB there was an application called WinUSB but it is no longer under active development. The following guide has been updated and works on any Linux distribution as long as it has GRUB and GParted installed and can make bootable USB for any Windows version newer than Vista: Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. UEFI boot is only supported for Windows 7 x64 and newer.

Before starting, let’s mention that there are two types of boot methods. There is the MBR code type where the bootable executable is stored in a reserved section at the beginning of the storage device. And there is the EFI type, where the boot loader executable file is stored at a standard path in an FAT32 filesystem. You must decide in advance what you will use. There are some variables for each boot type. If you have no idea what to use, the most common setup that works with unmodified Windows sources, is msdos partition table with fat32 filesystem and flag the partition with boot. In this way you will get both an MBR and UEFI bootable drive.

The latest Windows release can be downloaded from Microsoft as an ISO image. The ISO download page is available to non-Windows users. Otherwise, you are directed to download Media Creation Tool, which is Windows only software.

	Partition table	Filesystem	Partition flag
MBR bootable	msdos	ntfs / fat32	boot
UEFI bootable	msdos / gpt	fat32	boot / msftdata *

* msdos should be flagged with boot and gpt should be flagged with msftdata.

UEFI can only boot FAT32 drives! If you need to make an NTFS UEFI bootable flashdrive to remove the 4 GB maximum file size restriction of FAT32 see this: UEFI NTFS: Bootable Windows USB from Linux. There is also a video version of what is about to follow.

Format USB drive

This is the first step. GParted has a nice GUI and it is easy to use for this. So, plug in your USB flashdrive and start GParted (root permissions required). Select the USB drive and unmount it, otherwise you won’t be able to format it. Richt click on the mounted partition from the selected device and select Unmount in the context menu.

Warning! Selecting the wrong device will result in data loss!

GParted main window. The first thing to do is select the USB drive and unmount it.

You must re-create the partition table by going to the Device menu then select Create Partition Table. Choose msdos (or gpt if you want an UEFI only bootable drive) and click Apply.

Write a new partition table on the device

Right click the unallocated space and select New. Make a primary NTFS or FAT32 partition and give it a label too. The label must be as strange as possible because the bootloader will identify the bootable partition by this and you should not use windows (like I did in the video)! If the filesystem is FAT32 use only uppercase letters. For example: WUSB1840 would be a good label (W for Windows, USB for USB flash drive and 18:40 is the time I was writing this). Remember the label as you will need it later.

If you have a customized Windows with install.wim larger than 4 GB you should definitely go for NTFS. Otherwise, if you choose FAT32, you could get the flashdrive bootable from UEFI too.

New partition dialog

Apply all pending operation from Edit menu — Apply all operations or click the button on the main window. Right click the partition and choose Manage flags. If you chose the msdos partition table tick boot. If you chose the gpt partition table, msftdata should already be checked and you don’t have to do anything.

The Apply button from the main window of GParted

Copy Windows files

Quit GParted and use the file manager to copy all files from Windows ISO to USB stick. Mount the ISO using Open with — Disk Image Mounter (if you use Nautilus as a file manager). If that fails you can use Furius ISO Mount and loop-mount the ISO. Select all files Ctrl+A and Copy to USB drive which will be automatically mounted when you click on it at /media/<username>/<drive_label>. After the copy process is finished, look in the USB root folder for the boot directory. If it is uppercase, rename it to lowercase.

If you used NTFS filesystem and MSDOS table, only method A is available. If you used FAT32 and MSDOS table, you can apply method A, B or both. If you used GPT partition table, only method B should be followed.

Method A: MBR bootable

GRUB will be used for that. Open a Terminal and run:

sudo grub-install --target=i386-pc --boot-directory="/media/<username>/<drive_label>/boot" /dev/sdX

Replace:

• /media/<username>/<drive_label> with the path where USB drive is mounted;
• /dev/sdX with the USB drive, not the partition (e.g. /dev/sdb)

Warning! Selecting the wrong device (/dev/sdX) may result in bootloader corruption of the running operating system!

Wait for it to finish. If everything is OK, you should see:

Installing for i386-pc platform.  
Installation finished. No error reported.

Now, create a text file and write the following in it:

default=1  
timeout=15
color_normal=light-cyan/dark-gray
menu_color_normal=black/light-cyan
menu_color_highlight=white/black
 
menuentry "Start Windows Installation" {
    insmod ntfs
    insmod search_label
    search --no-floppy --set=root --label <USB_drive_label> --hint hd0,msdos1
    ntldr /bootmgr
    boot
}

menuentry "Boot from the first hard drive" {
    insmod ntfs
    insmod chain
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod part_gpt
    set root=(hd1)
    chainloader +1
    boot
}

Replace <USB_drive_label> with the label you gave it when you formatted the drive (you can place it between quotes if it contains a space, although it is not recommended to use spaces in drive label). Save the file as grub.cfg and put it on the USB drive in the boot/grub folder. That’s it. The USB drive is now bootable from BIOS and can be used to install Windows on your PC. The first time you boot from it in MBR BIOS or CSM mode select Start Windows Installation.

Method B: UEFI bootable

Not all Windows versions are supported. Windows 7 on 64 bits, Windows 8 and newer versions should work. After the copy process is finished, look in the USB root folder for the efi/boot directory. If there’s a bootx64.efi or bootia32.efi file there, then you’re done. You can boot from your USB in UEFI mode.

If the OS you are making a bootable USB for is Windows 7, browse the efi/microsoft folder and copy the entire boot folder from this path one level up in the efi folder. Merge folders if boot already exists. Here is what to do if you don’t have the bootx64.efi file in efi/boot folder. Browse the mounted Windows ISO image into the sources folder. Open install.wim (or install.esd) with your archive manager (you will need 7z installed). Go to the path ./1/Windows/Boot/EFI and extract the file bootmgfw.efi anywhere you want. Rename it to bootx64.efi and put it on the USB drive, in the efi/boot folder. If you can’t find bootmgfw.efi in install.wim then you probably have a 32 bit Windows ISO or other types of images (recovery disks, upgrade versions).

You can now boot from your USB in UEFI mode.

Errors

1. modinfo.sh doesn’t exist

grub-install: error: /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/modinfo.sh doesn't exist. Please specify --target or --directory.

Install the grub-pc-bin package with sudo apt install grub-pc-bin and run the grub-install command again.

2. Embedding errors

If you get embedding errors (something like filesystem 'x' does not support embedding or Embedding is not possible), be sure you are installing GRUB to USB device and not USB partition. Most likely you typed /dev/sdb1 instead of /dev/sdb (sdb is just an example here). If it still doesn’t work, try zeroing the USB drive (at least some sectors at beggining) or use a different USB flash drive.

3. Blocklists

Sometimes, GRUB will not install on some flash drives. Try to force it by adding --force argument to the grub-install command.

4. Alternate root partition selection

The root partition selection may fail if your USB flash drive partition has the same label as one of the partitions on the target computer. The best way of setting the root partition is by UUID. Launch again GParted and select the USB flashdrive. Right click the partition and select Information. Note the UUID field.

Partition UUID

In grub.cfg, replace the line:

search --no-floppy --set=root --label <USB_drive_label> --hint hd0,msdos1

with:

insmod search_fs_uuid
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set root <drive_UUID>

where you will replace <drive_UUID> with the UUID you got from GParted.

Still getting errors? If you want an useful answer, please post a comment with the complete grub-install command and the error message.

Links

• Grub2/Installing. Ubuntu Documentation, Community Help Wiki.
• Installing GRUB using grub-install. GNU GRUB Manual 2.00
• search command. GNU GRUB Manual 2.00
• GRUB bootloader — Full tutorial. Dedoimedo.com
• Curtis Gedak. GParted Manual.
• Manjaro Wiki. Some basics of MBR v/s GPT and BIOS v/s UEFI
• Manjaro Wiki. UEFI — Install Guide
• eightforums.com. How to Create a Bootable UEFI USB Flash Drive for Installing Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1
• Rod Smith. A BIOS to UEFI Transformation
• Daniel B and duDE answers on Do (USB) drives need a master boot record to boot in UEFI mode? available at SuperUser.com (CC-BY-SA 3.0)
• Thomas Krenn. Creating Windows UEFI Boot-Stick in Windows
• Wikipedia. UEFI Booting
• Wikipedia. UEFI System Partition
• Jonathan de Boyne Pollard. The EFI boot process
• TheNetZ. Answer on Can I use Ubuntu to write a Windows 7 ISO to USB? on Askubuntu.com (CC-BY-SA 3.0)