Linux: bootable USB with Windows, without tools

Creating a bootable USB with Windows is a game…. in Windows. This is because as a Windows user, there are many great USB creation tools. So downloading a copy of Windows to ISO and burning it to a USB for installation can be done in minutes.

What if you try to create a bootable USB with Windows on a Linux distribution? All the traditional USB imaging tools on the Linux platform (even the good ones like the Etcher) can not create a bootable Windows USB. This leaves users who use Windows and Linux by chance.

Below we will see a very easy way to create bootable USB with Windows without using any extra software.

Yes we will create a bootable USB only with the tools included in all distributions. For those who do not do well with the terminal, we'll explain how they can do the same thing as gparted.

First, add the USB to the port:

Open the terminal and:

sudo umount / dev / sdb (the last letter b can be changed on your system) to umount the disk

Let's format the flash drive to Fat32 with the command:

sudo mkfs.msdos -F 32 / dev / sdb1

The command requires creating a partition msdos in Fat32 format.

To do the same with gparted, run the application, do umount USB and from the menu - Device - Create Partition Table

Select msdos and click Apply.

Then choose format to FAT 32.

Logically we are ready to create USB.

Open ISO of Windows downloaded with the Disk Image Mounter, select all the files, copy and paste to the USB that we took in the above steps. 

The process

In the above image it seems that I have opened folders as root. I had to do it because I was in MX Linux distribution that does not allow system file replication to ordinary users.

With some other distribution you will not have a problem even if you copy the paste as ordinary users.

Ready, try booting from USB.