Here is a non exhaustive list of tested sources with download links where possible.
In short:
- Any Windows version for PC starting from 2000- XP, 2003, Vista, Server 2008, Server 2012, 8, WinFLPC and so on. It supports both 32 and 64 bits versions. For XP/2003 versions there is advanced option to prepare source to be installed onto USB disk.
- UBCD4Win, BartPE, WinBuilder etc. PE1 based source
- Windows PE2 and above based source
- Many GNU Linux based sources- Ubuntu, Fedora, many antivirus rescue disks etc. etc. refer to this page for more
- DOS based ISOs such as UBCD
- other ISO images as long as they are compatible with grub4dos ISO emulation- Acronis True Image ISO, Paragon Boot Media to name a few
In addition the program can add Syslinux boot entry and boot such source, which boots using Syslinux or Isolinux.
Yes, just add them one after another, i.e. add first source of the same type, press GO, when finished transferring it onto the USB disk add the second, press GO and so on. There is no need to restart the program between each source. The only two exceptions, when multiple similar sources are not supported, are PE1 (BartPE, UBCD4Win…) and Syslinux based ones.
- Try the integrated DPMS option before starting Text mode, try “Auto-detect and use F6 SATA/RAID/SCSI Driver” menu first, if that doesn’t work for you and Setup bluescreens or hangs for example, then try “Auto-detect and use F6 SATA/RAID/SCSI Driver + Firadisk“. It would select and add the appropriate mass storage driver to a virtual floppy, which will be used by Setup to add the needed drivers.
- Integrate BTS mass storage drivers pack into your source before preparing the USB disk. Make sure Text mode option is selected. Including other driver packs (Sound, Video etc.) makes such source quite universal.
- Switch AHCI(SATA) mode to IDE (Compatible) in BIOS if there is such option.
- Integrate the proper mass storage drivers with nLite beforehand.
- Supply a floppy image with the appropriate SATA/AHCI drivers using the advanced option “Custom drivers/F6 floppy image for 2000/XP/2003 Setup“. It needs to have txtsetup.oem file in it and be suitable for Text mode part of the installer.
- On some motherboards USB booting is tricky, common example are many Dell systems. A modified NTDETECT.COM usually solves the problem. Next use the advanced option “Custom NTDETECT.COM file for 2000/XP/2003 Setup” to select the custom NTDETECT.COM and use when source is prepared
- The source does not have the appropriate mass storage (SATA, AHCI) drivers, refer to A3 for solutions
It expects partitioned and formatted disk with MBR (Master boot record) and an active partition. Typically, unless already partitioned with another tool or diskpart in Vista and later, Windows does not format blank USB removable media (most USB sticks) in such way, instead, they are formatted as a superfloppy with no MBR and single partition occupying the whole space, thus not bootable.
Either use the auto-format option, or use one of the tools RMPrepUSB, FBInst or BootIce to repartition and format it.
Generally speaking- yes. Due to the numerous ways to customize XP for example, it’s hard to test every kind of customization, hence severely modified sources may not install properly. In case of NT6 (Vista and above) customized source, as long as updates or hotfixes are integrated into install.wim and using setupcomplete.cmd script, which seeks for files on the system drive, rather than the source DVD, there should be no issues.
- Display disk drives on all interfaces, not only USB – this should be self explanatory, show all detected disks, not only the ones on USB interface. Use it with caution, selecting wring disk may lead to data loss.
- Don’t check for and install grub4dos MBR – skips checks for grub4dos/fbinst MBR. Use it if you have custom prepared and formatted USB disk and you did take care of its boot ability.
- Shared BTS driver pack OEM folder – if XP/2000/2003 sources have BTS driver packs integrated, this options will set one OEM folder for all sources where the options was used, instead of each source having own OEM folder in the corresponding WINSETUP sub-directory. BTS presetup.cmd is edited accordingly.
- Prepare Windows 2000/XP/2003 to be installed on USB – prepares the transferred source so it can be installed to USB disk. That could be to the same USB disk, or another of the same type, i.e. USB stick with the Setup files and target USB stick, or USB fixed disk and target USB fixed disk. Internal hard disks and any other mass storage devices should be removed or disabled during setup process. USB drivers are set to start early, and a small service, USBbootWatcher, is installed which monitors the USB drivers settings in registry for changes. If there are such, they are reverted to the default settings as in usbbootw(atcher).cnf. Another driver takes care for USB boot when there are no any other disks and only USB removable one- WaitBT, without it Windows typically will crash with 0x0000007B stop error.
- Remove disk space requirements from txtsetup.sif – removes disk space requirements in txtsetup.sif. Useful if you are installing Windows XP/2000/2003 on disk with limited space, less than the allowed one, and you know your source would fit.
- Show debug messages during Text mode – show debug messages from WaitBT driver at start of Text mode of XP/2000/2003 Setup.
- Custom folder and menu name for 2000/XP/2003 Setup – use if you want to set custom names for the sub-directory and boot menu names for 2000/XP/2003 sources.
- Do not copy and use DPMS – do not add the DPMS feature to the USB disk. DPMS is an automated solution by Chenall and modified by Steve for adding the needed mass storage drivers into a virtual floppy, which is used by Windows 2000/XP/2003 setup to add AHCI/SATA/SCSI/RAID drivers.
- Custom drivers/F6 floppy image for 2000/XP/2003 Setup – it will be loaded as a virtual floppy before start of Text mode part of 2000/XP/2003 Setup. If DPMS does not work for you this could be another option. Please note that only the default driver as stated in txtsetup.oem could be used in setup process.
- Custom NTDETECT.COM file for 2000/XP/2003 Setup – browse to a custom NTDETECT.COM and include it in the selected 2000/XP/2003 source. That’s useful to prevent 0x0000007B stop error on some rare systems. Details could be found here.
- Custom menu names for Vista/7/8/Server Source – use if you want to set custom names for the sub-directory and boot menu names for Vista, Server 2008, Win7, Win8 and so on sources.
- Launch Q-Dir before Setup – this will add Q-Dir file explorer, which will be launched before start of NT6 (Vista and later) setup. When it’s closed, setup will start. Helpful if you need to browse the contents of the hard disks, backup and restore files etc. before running Setup.
- Add boot-critical drivers, loaded before start of Setup – adds a folder with custom drivers, loaded before start of Setup. Each INF file inside is processed and passed to DrvLoad.exe as an argument. Drivers for non-present devices are ignored. There are some limitations- if the driver .inf file requires a restart, Windows PE will ignore the request. If the driver .sys file requires a restart, the driver cannot be added by using Drvload. All loaded drivers will be propagated to the OS being installed. Use this option to add boot-critical drivers, such as USB 3.0, AHCI/SATA/RAID etc. For non boot-critical drivers, take a look at the proven and reliable Stand Alone Driverpack utility.
- Add persistence– adds a persistence ext2 partition of the selected size as third partition entry, using the selected volume name (default is CASPER-RW). You will also most likely need to append persistent to your boot menu options- for *buntu and derivatives- at the isolinux boot menu select your language, then press F6, then press ESC and add persistent to the boot string, then press Enter to boot. For other distros please consult with the documentation what kernel parameter and volume name has to be used.
There are many possible reasons, refer to this tutorial for some ideas.
Yes, since version 1.1, for Windows NT6/10 family- Vista x64 SP1 and above. Please note that until Windows 8, only 64 bit versions support boot under EFI, and the partition on the USB disk must be formatted in FAT32 in order to be recognized and booted in EFI mode.This is limitation of (U)EFI, some vendor specific implementations may support other file systems such as NTFS. More details here and here.
32 bit (U)EFI boot, supported in Windows 8 and later, is possible only on 32 bit (U)EFI hardware, such as some tables with recent Intel Atom processors. In other words, UEFI requires the firmware and operating system loader (or kernel) to be size-matched; for example, a 64-bit UEFI implementation can only load a 64-bit UEFI operating system boot loader or kernel.
There is nothing else to be modified, just use FAT32 partition, the program will do the rest. The same USB disk will also work in BIOS mode without modifications.
If your ISO file is over 4GB and can’t fit on FAT32 formatted volume, program will take care and split the large ISO in smaller chunks. Alternatively, please take look at this thread on how to use NTFS UEFI driver.
The same way the first one was added, there is even no need to restart the program, once the first one was transferred to the USB disk, select the new source and press GO again.
The program uses a copy of BOOT.WIM and few other files in WINSETUP folder. If disk space is concern, you may safely modify the original ISO image in the corresponding WINSETUP subfolder and delete BOOT.WIM in it. This way of booting helps in some rare occasions when Setup would not start from USB disk.
Program is free for personal and commercial use and can be freely redistributed as long as the licenses of the tools included are not violated and there is clear link to this page or the home page @ msfn forum if it is hosted elsewhere.
The program may not be sold or included in commercial products without written consent from its author.
This may happen on some machines if the partition on the USB disk where source files are is FAT32 formatted. Use NTFS instead if you do not need to boot Vista and later in (U)EFI mode with the same USB disk, or look at A9 on how to try (U)EFI and NTFS.
Here are some comparison tests for each file system, preparing and running XP Setup on XP and Windows 7 host OS.
Please put WinSetupFromUSB.log file and all .cab files in backup folder in a zip or 7zip archive, and upload it to datafilehost.com for example. These files are in the folder where program was extracted to.
Then leave a comment on the help page, mentioning what the problem exactly is, and a download link to the uploaded log files.
- Windows Vista/7/8/10/Server 2008-2012– delete the corresponding ISO file and directory on the USB disk\WINSETUP\. Then edit Windows bcd menus with the included BootIce or the free VisualBCD- edit \boot\bcd for BIOS boot and \efi\microsoft\boot\bcd for EFI boot
- Windows XP/2000/2003 – delete the corresponding folder in USB disk\WINSETUP\. Then edit winsetup.lst in USB disk root and remove the relevant lines (in bold):
…
title First part of Windows XP Pro Setup from partition 1
set ISOPATH=/WINSETUP/XPpSP3
…
map –unmap=0:0xff && map –rehooktitle title Second part of Windows XP Pro Setup/Boot first internal disk
savedefault
…
chainloader (hd0)+1
rootnoverify (hd0)title \n
roottitle First part of Windows XP Home Setup from partition 1
…
- Linux/Other Grub4dos compatible ISO– delete the ISO file from USB disk\ISOs. Then edit menu.lst in USB disk root, preferably with an advanced text editor such as the free Notepad++. Delete the following lines (in bold):
title My Linux Iso
map –unmap=0:0xff
…
…
root (0xff)
chainloader (0xff)title My Other Linux ISO
- Windows Vista/7/8/10/Server 2008-2012– edit bcd menus with the included BootIce or the free VisualBCD– edit <USB disk>\boot\bcd for BIOS boot and <USB disk>\efi\microsoft\boot\bcd for EFI boot.
- Windows XP/2000/2003 – Edit with a proper text editor such as Notepad++ <USB disk>\winsetup.lst as in the above answer 15
- Linux/Other Grub4dos compatible ISO– edit <USB disk>\menu.lst as in the above answer 15
Please refer to this in-depth explanation from the author of RMPrepUSB and easy2boot
Under UEFI, currently only Windows sources can be booted.
Program uses grub4dos for BIOS and Microsoft bootmgr for UEFI boot. Grub4dos does excellent job booting just about anything, including most Linux ISOs without any modifications. Unfortunately, UEFI is completely different architecture compared to BIOS, and grub4dos can’t and won’t support it. As of now, as far as I am aware, there is no similar boot manager such as grub4dos, which supports same features needed to boot Linux ISOs without modification and also supports UEFI. Grub2, which is the closest candidate and supports UEFI, does not yet support these grub4dos features.
Yes. As long as you use unmodified Microsoft source, it should work just fine.
Hey dev,
I have tried alot install win 7, win8.1 or Acronis True Image 2014 Using ver.1.5 or1.6 beta but it stoped at black screen and all my pc stoped so i unplug flash and restart pc it’s work fine..so what’s go on ..?
i have tried install with Flash 8g and 16g with NTFS, align and copy BPB – some times without BPB
win8.1 iso : Windows 8.1 [G2] AIO 12in1 With Update ESD en-US May 2015
my pc info : http://txt.do/z2co
It’s work fine with using tool rufus-2.1
so plz hlep in my problem
Can you post the log files, details how to do it are in the FAQ page.
I dont know what do you mean about put it in FAQ page..?! coz it’s already in faq page.if not plz be more clear how ro do that.
where can i find that log file and details you need .? Plz be more clear
all i know i have problem in install windows using your tools ..and i gave you above a link for my info to check if my pc is the problem
Faq #14 above.
Is there a tutorial or thread that will resolve the error “waiting USB disks to initalize”? I get this every time and followed these instructions over and over. Can someone please point me to the right place? Thank you
Try using USB 2.0 port and/or adjust usb port settings in bios.
Windows is not seeing the usb disk and this is most likely the reason.
I’ve tried every usb port on the machine. And I see nothing in the bios about usb port settings. Any other tricks?
What is the exact model of the usb disk/stick?
What is the exact model of the machine you are booting it on?
What Windows version?
It’s a 4GB Sandisk drive. I’ve also tried a SONY 4GB Drive. The PC is a Dell Optiplex 780 Desktop Core 2 Duo 2.93GHz CPU 4GB RAM 250GB HDD. I am attempting to install Windows 7.
Have you added usb/chipset drivers to the source? Is it vanilla Win7?
I have a few optiplex 780 I can test on tomorrow, bear with me.
Just tested USB stick SanDisk Extreme 32 GB, prepared with 1.6 beta1 in Fat32 and Win7, on Optiplex 780 and everything worked just fine.
Do you think it’s the iso I’m using?
I’m using an all in one windows version.
Try vanilla source and you will find out.
You should always first test vanilla sources when having similar issues.
this works perfectly for USB 2.0 devices, but when using USB3.0 it does not work, is their a solution for USB3 support
What exactly do not work when using USB 3.0?
Solution for USB 3.0 support of what?
i have a USB2.drive which works fine for this, but when using my USB3 drive it can’t boot to QEMU
Does it work on real hardware?
on USB2 yes but not USB3
i have an Acer Aspire E1-571 which only has USB2 ports
Buddy, I cannot understand what exactly you need to do and what is failing for you, apart from the issue with QEMU and USB 3.0 stick, which I have no clue how to resolve apart from updating QEMU which is quite tricky process, given how unstable QEMU could be on Windows platforms and the time spent in finding version which supports most of the sources tested. So consider having working QEMU as a bonus.
Now, what exactly are you booting on USB 3.0 and is failing for you (Windows 7/8/10, XP, Linux or what?) and on what hardware is it failing?
What exactly is failing? What is the error message?
Do you think one line questions like “this works perfectly for USB 2.0 devices, but when using USB3.0 it does not work” bring any useful information so you can be helped?
Error creating Windows 10 with both 32 and 64 bit arhitectures single ISO downloaded from Windows Media Creation tool.
Log and cab files: http://www.datafilehost.com/d/5b738c31
The log file shows there is no /sources/boot.wim hence the error.
Is the file present indeed?
boot.wim is present.Im posting pictures as proof.
http://www.datafilehost.com/d/92a52fb3
This is not \sources\boot.wim, but \x64\sources\boot.wim and another one in \x86\…
Can you upload \boot\bcd to datafilehost?
Is this going to work with GPT partition scheme? I am trying to create all in one windows 10 installer (home and pro each with both 32 and 64 bit editions) and need be UEFI\GPT bootable. Any suggestions?
You do not need the USB disk to be GPT for UEFI boot. FAT32 and MBR would be fine to install in UEFI mode and GPT on the target disk.
This is not working with HP Probook 4530, keep getting the error of GPT disk
Unlikely to be related to the USB setup, what’s the exact error? Have you tried google search for clues?
Ok here is boot/bcd file from the root of iso file
http://www.datafilehost.com/d/63ed63c1
I am afraid this source won’t be supported soon as it requires major rewrite due to the non-standard file locations.
You still can put it on USB as a single source, using the previous versions of the program, 1.0 beta8 for example, which place the source unmodified on the USB disk as is, using FAT32 for EFI compatibility.
It has to be the first source of this type, and any other source of the same type has to be placed using 1.5 or later versions for multiboot.
Hi Sir,
I used old version to upload windows 10 to my usb stick and it makes some problems .. later I found the new version that support windows10.
now at EFI boot screen there is empty line refer to old windows 10 so my question is how can I delete this fake choice and remove it from efi screen
Edit \efi\microsoft\boot\bcd with the included BootIce or the free VisualBCD, or if brave with the command line bcdedit.