How to make a bootable pendrive for Windows 10 Technical Preview from Ubuntu

I want to install Windows 10 Technical Preview x64 on my computer, and I have downloaded the ISO file.

Now I need to make the USB stick bootable, but I am using Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit (Trusty Tahr), so how can I make a bootable pendrive for Windows 10 from Ubuntu?

I have tried making USB bootable using winusb, but it's not working! Is there another option?

Solution 1:

I tried dd, but it didn't work. I tried UNetbootin, but it didn't work. I looked for winusb, but I couldn't find it and heard it doesn't work for Windows 10, anyway.

But! This did work for me! http://onetransistor.blogspot.com/2014/09/make-bootable-windows-usb-from-ubuntu.html

Note that I had to add "--force" on the grub-install command.

The steps are basically as follows:

1. Format a USB drive; give it an NTFS partition. Write down the partition's UUID.
2. Mount the Windows ISO image and copy all the files to the USB drive.
3. Run sudo grub-install --force --target=i386-pc --boot-directory="/<path-to-usb>/boot" /dev/sdX, where sdX is like, "sdb". (Not sdb1.)

4. Put the following text on the USB drive, in a new file at boot/grub/grub.cfg

   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_fs_uuid
       insmod chain
       search --no-floppy --fs-uuid <drive_UUID> --set root
       chainloader +1
       boot
   }
   menuentry "Boot from the first hard drive" {
       insmod ntfs
       insmod chain
       insmod part_msdos
       set root=(hd1)
       chainloader +1
       boot
   }
   

In the file, replace <drive_UUID> with the partition ID you wrote down. (Note that when I booted it, I saw something like "no such drive U7A6.." or whatever the id I put in was...but it booted anyway, so hey.)

Drive should be bootable at that point. It worked for me. There are a few possible error messages he explains on the site, if you have problems.

Solution 2:

I did that with winusb. To install it, run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:colingille/freshlight && \
sudo sh -c "sed -i 's/trusty/saucy/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/colingille-freshlight-trusty.list" && \
sudo apt-get update && \
sudo apt-get install winusb

Then I think you can use this program without my help.

You can try UNetbootin. To install, run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gezakovacs/ppa && \
sudo apt-get update && \
sudo apt-get install unetbootin