How do I burn the Windows 10 ISO to a USB?

Solution 1:

I tried all the ways in this thread and none worked (and seriously, the question is about specifically writing to an USB key, why would people propose copying the ISO to another partition instead ??).

The solution that did the trick for me (assuming your USB drive is /dev/sdc):

• Run gparted
• Create a new partition table on sdc, type msdos
• Create a NTFS partition, set the boot flag on it
• Extract the iso (can be done with 7z x windows10.iso)

• Copy the content (via cp, rsync, a GUI, whatever) to the mounted NTFS partition (certainly /dev/sdc1)

• The last, critical step, taken from this post : https://superuser.com/a/817656/248812 is :

  sudo ms-sys -7 /dev/sdc.

  ms-sys is available in a ppa : https://launchpad.net/~lenski/+archive/ubuntu/ms-sys

Without ms-sys, blinking cursor on boot when the USB key is inserted.

With it, windows logo shows up.

Solution 2:

You don't need a USB, DVD or other external medium to install a Windows 10 Install Disk (ISO) starting from a Ubuntu only installation. It is possible to extract the image or ISO file to a partition of one your hard disks, preferable not the one your will use for a new Windows installation, and use it.

For the following steps, a working GRUB configuration should be present:

1. Make sure you have a bootable and formatted NTFS partition present. Below, the partition will identified by (hd0,5) where hd0 is the containing hard disk with MSDOS or MBR partition table layout.

2. Mounting the image will make it easier to extract it's contents. If Disk Image Mounter refuses to mount the iso file you can always use this command to mount any iso file:

   sudo mount -o loop [Image_Path] [Mount_Point]
   

3. Copy the contents of new loop device to the NTFS partition.

4. Now add a GRUB entry for Windows 10. This will make it possible for the bootloader GRUB to find install disk contained in the partition. Open /boot/grub/grub.cfg in text editor as root and add these lines

   menuentry 'Windows 10 Install Disk' {
   set root=(hd0,5)
   insmod part_msdos
   insmod ntfs
   insmod ntldr
   drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}
   ntldr /bootmgr
   }
   

   change the root if needed, accordingly.

5. Save and restart computer. Boot into the right item of your updated GRUB menu.

Watch this Youtube tutorial https://youtu.be/1Y4JXv9r5Ug

Solution 3:

You can copy all the ISO contents to the flash drive and make it bootable.

So, first of all, install GParted from software center or from terminal:

sudo apt-get install gparted

Then, open it from dash or terminal:

gksudo gparted

After that, choose the flash drive from the menu in top right corner. There should be one partition. If you haven't any data to backup, reformat it as ntfs (bootmgr doesn't work right on fat32), click Apply (the tick in the header menu). Right-click the partition, choose Manage flags and check boot.

Then, you can mount it through your file manager (nautilus is default for GNOME and Unity).

Mount the ISO file:

sudo mount -o loop [path to iso] [mountpoint]

Then, you can copy all contents from the ISO mountpoint to the flash drive via the file manager.

Reboot your computer and set the USB Flash Drive to boot first.