Burn bootable Windows 10 ISO image to USB stick with dd?

[php4fan]

I downloaded a Windows 10 installation ISO from Microsoft’s official website and attempted to “burn” it to a usb stick with:

sudo dd bs=4M if=/home/teo/Downloads/Win10_22H2_Spanish_x64v1.iso of=/dev/sda status=progress oflag=sync

That is the same command that the Manjaro wiki recommends to burn a bootable iso image of Manjaro. I thought it would work with any bootable iso.

However, the usb stick doesn’t seem to be bootable.

I plug the USB stick into a laptop, boot and hit F12, a menu appears allowing me to choose the drive to boot from, but the USB stick isn’t listed. I have been able to boot from other USB sticks on the same computer, including one of Memtest86 and one of Manjaro itself.

What am I missing?

Do I need some other special tool to burn the iso image because it’s windows? Isn’t dd “agnostic” to the content of the image?

[BG405]

I’m not too familiar with Windows .ISOs these days, but I’d think that they should work if you use Ventoy?

Ventoy

The only Windows “installations” I have are safely contained within VirtualBox, or have uPVC or wooden frames.

To answer your last question, I too would expect dd to “just work regardless” but I’ve read (somewhere) that this isn’t the case.

[soundofthunder]

As Ventoy was mentioned, the following ‘How to’ will prove very useful. For a bootable ISO launcher solution Ventoy simply makes sense;

[HowTo] Create a Ventoy USB to launch Manjaro (and other) ISO's

Ventoy A New Bootable USB Solution Boot with a Ventoy USB and ISO files are automatically listed in the Ventoy menu. Any ISO present can then be launched and booted directly. The obvious advantage here is that instead of constantly writing a Manjaro Installer ISO to a new USB any time you might need it, every ISO you desire can be stored on the Ventoy USB and launched the same way. A 32GB capacity USB would allow ample space to store several ISOs of your choice; an 8GB capacity USB might …

Regards.

[ydar]

I used woeusb a few months ago without any issues for Windows 11. It’s available from the AUR, there’s also woeusb-ng but I didn’t try that since the original woeusb worked for me.

It was really easy, you can easily find tutorials

All I did was this simple command, after opening the terminal to the folder where the windows iso is located:

sudo woeusb --device Windows_enter_the_iso_name.iso /dev/sdc

Make sure to verify the correct disk you’re writing to.

[Pille]

@php4fan

but the USB stick isn’t listed.

That is then normally not a problem of the Windows ISO but your computer not recognizing the stick.
It should be listed at least, independent from the content.

I was always using Balena Etcher in former years to create a bootable Windows 10 Media.

[linux-aarhus]

Using dd with a windows ISO will not work, and this has been known for years.

@php4fan

Do I need some other special tool to burn the iso image because it’s windows?

You cannot ‘burn’ the image to a stick.

I wrote a guide on the previous forum instance - and added it to this new instance back in septemper 2020.

→ [root tip] [How To] Use Manjaro to create a bootable Windows USB

Before the ventoy tool the only one way to create a bootable Windows ISO was to mount the iso, then format a stick with fat32 and copy the files from the ISO to the stick.

Later when the vim file exceeded 4G exfat was required.

@php4fan

Isn’t dd “agnostic” to the content of the image?

Yes it is and I think that is part of why it doesn’t work - I never managed to understand why dd is not working for this use case.

The most reasonable explanation is this comment

@LopezT

the problem is that newer windows iso’s only support ‘el torito’ mbr, which is only used for burning iso’s to a dvd or cd. For usage of a windows iso’s which is bootable from a usb drive you need an additional mbr. Linux distribution create hybrid mbr’s for years already, windows is neglecting it.

I have been stumbling over this issue by myself recently and creating a windows bootable usb media with woeusb was the solution. There are many different solutions like converting the iso on osx to a dmg and then put it onto usb with dd.

But simply writing the iso with dd to a usb media with a current windows 10 iso does NOT work, it won’t be bootable.

[Keruskerfuerst]

If you write the Windows 10 iso image to USB stick, then
Windows writes the activation key to USB stick.
And then the USB stick works only with one computer with that key.

I am using Ventoy and this works.

[Pille]

Never heard about that. Windows normally binds the key to the hardware of the device where it is installed. That’s why you cannot simply use the license again on a different computer, even if the first one isn’t in use any longer.
There are steps to do it, but it means some additional work.

And if the USB device doesn’t boot, it is not related to the activation key.

[BG405]

@Pille

Windows normally binds the key to the hardware of the device where it is installed.

Yes, indeed. If I ever needed to use Windows on this one, for example, it should activate without issue.

In the case of retail copies, at least as far as Win7, the key was provided on a sticker in the box with the DVD(s); don’t know if this is still the case with 10/11 but I’d assume so.

[Pille]

@BG405

don’t know if this is still the case with 10/11 but I’d assume so

Yes, it should be in the box or you will get it by mail for a digitally purchased copy.
From the Microsoft KB:

EDIT: With Windows 10 you can even skip entering the license key during setup and unlock the finished installation later within 30 days.
As far as i know this is removed on Windows 11, you cannot skip this step during setup of a retail copy.