Follow these steps to create installation media (USB flash drive or DVD) you can use to install a new copy of Windows 10, perform a clean installation, or reinstall Windows 10.
Before you download the tool make sure you have:
- An internet connection (internet service provider fees may apply).
- Sufficient data storage available on a computer, USB or external drive for the download.
- A blank USB flash drive with at least 8GB of space or blank DVD (and DVD burner) if you want to create media. We recommend using a blank USB or blank DVD, because any content on it will be deleted.
- When burning a DVD from an ISO file, if you are told the disc image file is too large you will need to use Dual Layer (DL) DVD Media.
Check a few things on the PC where you want to install Windows 10:
- 64-bit or 32-bit processor (CPU). You’ll create either a 64-bit or 32-bit version of Windows 10. To check this on your PC, go to PC info in PC settings or System in Control Panel, and look for System type.
- System requirements. Make sure the PC meets the system requirements for Windows 10. We also recommend going to the PC manufacturer's website for additional info about updated drivers and hardware compatibility.
- Language in Windows. You'll need to choose the same language when you install Windows 10. To see what language you're currently using, go to Time and language in PC settings or Region in Control Panel.
- Edition of Windows. You should also choose the same edition of Windows. To check what edition you're currently running, go to PC info in PC settings or System in Control Panel, and look for Windows edition. Windows 10 Enterprise isn’t available in the media creation tool. For more info, go to the Volume Licensing Service Center.
- Microsoft Office products. If you just purchased a new device that includes Office 365, we recommend redeeming (installing) Office before upgrading to Windows 10. To redeem your copy of Office, please see Download and install Office 365 Home, Personal, or University on your PC. For more information, check How to upgrade to Windows 10 on new devices that include Office 365.
Hey, when using Media Creation Tool to download and make Windows 8.1 N Bootable on my 64GB Kingston 3.0 USB, the process gets all the way to the end before failing and saying 'sorry something happened and we couldn't finish creating the flash drive in drive I access is denied'.
If you have Office 2010 or earlier and choose to perform a clean install of Windows 10, you will need to locate your Office product key. For tips on locating your product key, check Find your Office 2010 product key or Enter the product key for your Office 2007 program.
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- Media Creation Tool for Windows 8.1 To create the installation media you will need either a blank DVD or USB drive with at least 4 GB of space. You can get the creation tool from this page.
Using the tool to create installation media:
- Select Download tool now, and select Run. You need to be an administrator to run this tool.
- If you agree to the license terms, select Accept.
- On the What do you want to do? page, select Create installation media for another PC, and then select Next.
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Select the language, edition, and architecture (64-bit or 32-bit) for Windows 10. This table will help you decide which edition of Windows 10 you’ll choose:
Your current edition of Windows Windows 10 edition Windows 7 Starter
Windows 7 Home Basic
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Ultimate
Windows 8/8.1
Windows 8.1 with Bing
Windows 8 Pro
Windows 8.1 Pro
Windows 8/8.1 Professional with Media Center
Windows 8/8.1 Single Language
Windows 8 Single Language with Bing
Windows 10 Home
Windows 10 ProWindows 10 Windows 8/8.1 Chinese Language Edition
Windows 8 Chinese Language Edition with BingWindows 10 Home China - Select which media you want to use:
- USB flash drive. Attach a blank USB flash drive with at least 8GB of space. Any content on the flash drive will be deleted.
- ISO file. Save an ISO file to your PC, which you can use to create a DVD. After the file is downloaded, you can go to location where the file is saved, or select Open DVD burner, and follow the instructions to burn the file to a DVD. For more info about using an ISO file, see Additional methods for using the ISO file to install Windows 10 section below.
- After the installation media is created, follow the steps below to use it.
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After completing the steps to install Windows 10, please check that you have all the necessary device drivers installed. To check for updates now, select the Start button, and then go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update, and select Check for updates. You may also wish to visit your device manufacturer’s support site for any additional drivers that may be needed.
Note: Drivers for Surface devices may be found on the Download drivers and firmware for Surface page.
My MBA 2012 with OS X 10.9.4 Mavericks won't boot anymore - it simply freezes after the initial jingle. I already tried resetting NVRAM and SMC, but to no avail. I don't have any time machine backups.
However, I still have a disc image of Mavericks sitting on an external hard drive, a USB stick and access to a notebook with Windows 7.
I haven't yet found any tutorial on how to create a bootable USB drive on Windows in order to reinstall OS X on my beloved Macbook Air.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
8 Answers
According to the first answer here, https://superuser.com/questions/383235/create-a-bootable-usb-drive-from-a-dmg-file-on-windows, there's a tool with a free trial called TransMac that can do it. Just make sure the USB drive is formatted with GPT and not MBR.
What might be easier, however, is that that model has support for Internet Recovery. If you boot holding Command-R and you have a WiFi connection, it can actually boot into recovery mode without a recovery partition on a drive (or even without a working drive).
Having said that, your description of a crash right after the boot chime could signify a more serious hardware problem and you may not be able to boot anything. If you boot holding the option key down, the startup disk selection screen should appear. If it crashes anyways, you may be looking at a hardware problem.
I know this question is old but it is still valid. I was never able to write a Mac installer image to my Flash Drive and have it bootable, unless I did it on a Mac. Using Michael D. M. Dryden's Link, I was able to use the Diskpart command to clean and prep a GPT partition on a flash drive for an OSX Mavericks install image.
I used TransMac on Windows 7 to restore the image file I had to the Flash Drive, it created a bootable Mac image on my flash drive. Someone had reported that the method for using DISKPART did not work, but I have done this twice and it works remarkably well, and it's the only method I could find to create a Mac-Bootable Flash. I've been trying to post this to confirm that it works for some time, I just hope it helps someone else, because it is a very easy solution.
Here are the Diskpart commands used to prep the Flash Drive, just to have them here in case my Link does not work:
(Find the disk number)
Disk x is now the selected disk.
DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.
DiskPart successfully converted the selected disk to GPT format.
Note: I use 'Rufus' for all other USB writing and formatting for Windows systems, it's a great app, but I had previously tried to format the drive as GPT using that, as a Fat32 partition. When I tried to inject the image, Transmac told me that the drive was 'write protected'. So basically, the USB drive cannot have any high level formatting, the Windows system should detect the drive as 'not formatted' for this to work, which it will if prepped right with Diskpart.
Windows Creation Tool For Windows 8
I was able to do this with Power ISO on Windows but it cost me $29.99
-- I created an ISO from the original install DVD and then went to tools => Create Bootable USB...Selected the OSX imageSelected the USB drive to create the bootable image onSelected RAW mode
I popped it in my Desklamp iMac (DVD Drive busted from toddlers -- majority of OS was trashed by 5yo) and boom ready to install.
I had this problem with a friend computer, it was an old iMac and I'll tell you it is not going to be easy.
The first thing you have to do is make sure what model you have (the year when your computer has been released) then check on the official apple website to see what is the latest macOS or Mac OS X version available for you computer.
In most of the new mac computer, you can just press cmd+r while booting and the mac will automatically download everything you need to install the system, but the oldest does not have this tool.
In this case, you have to download the dmg file, that can be found on the web, for example, one websites that provides some macOS and Mac OS X is this (for El Capitan, if you need another version, I'm sorry but you have to search for it).
Here things start to get a little tricky.
First of all you have to flash the image on a USB drive, I recommend etcher, that works on everything (Mac, Linux and Windows too) it's extremely easy to use and you just need to select the drive and the image and etcher will do everything by itself, plus it's free here.
When the USB drive is ready you can plug it in you mac and press alt (option) while booting, you have inserted a firmware password, it will ask you to unlock the firmware by inserting that password, else it will take you to all the bootable drives, including your USB device.
If you see the mac logo with a stop icon over it, it means that you downloaded a too new version that is not supported from your mac, else it will start.
When it start, it won't install, saying that the system can't verify the downloaded image, that's why you have to navigate on the 'utilities' menu on the top bar and open the terminal.
Now you have to choices, change the date & time, which can work, but may not.
That's basically because every image of mac has a certificate that can expire, so, if the certificate is expired you won't be able to make it work, unless you change the date (the date is different from mac version to mac version, so based on that you have to change it, usually just search for when was that version released and se the current date to that date or even one or two days later to make it work). Then try to install the system, if this does not work again, you can start the installation without verifying the image, but you should really trust the image you're using from being corrupted or modified (just to make sure the download went right, use the SHA-1 code to make the file has been downloaded right).
So, to proceed without verifying the image, from terminal, type in this command: sudo defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify true
then, start the installation. (Is possible that you won't need the sudo at the begin, in that case just remove it from the command and start from 'defaults')
Now you should be able to install macOS from a USB drive...
Just a little thing, make sure to have formatted the disk before proceeding, I would recommend to make a partition that takes the whole disk in mac Journaled format, then if you want you will be able to encrypt the disk (the installer will ask you to do that later), instead, if the disk was encrypted before, you will have to insert the encryption key of the disk to continue the installation process.
Really hope this help, I spent a lot of hours to do this on a really old iMac from 2008... and now it works!
Good luck!
In my humble opinion, the easiest and a free solution for creating bootable drives is Rufus.
Windows Creation Tool For Windows 10
Jawa
I've been struggling with the same problem but this works for me:
- convert the .dmg image with power iso to iso
- put the iso on a usb stick (drag it into your mac hard drive and mount it)
- format your usb stick with the disk utility tool. (Make sure the usb is partitioned as mac bootable then use use the image recovery and put your mounted OS X iso into the source and your usb as the location.)
- restart your computer while holding down the option key
dwightk
You can create bootable USB drive on Windows using POWER ISO. You will be able to download a copy of old one version of powerISO by provided links this tutorial.
You need pen drive of more than 8 GB.
I've tried many tutorials on how to create a mac bootable USB drive from Windows but none of them worked. So, I've come up with my own solution that worked fine with any DMG I've tested. Please find the details on my github page.
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