need help with windows installs

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SONIC122
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need help with windows installs

Post by SONIC122 »

hey everyone. My friend bought an HP pavilon all in one from an estate sale. Clap anyway when he got it it had ubuntu linux on the hard disk. (jammy linux if you were wondering) anyway Ive been trying to use my (limited) tech support "skills" to help him get windows 10/11 installed onto it instead of linux, cuz linux is a b*tch. we got the official windows 10 ISO to download on the computer, but the issue is that, every time we try to drag and drop it onto a USB stick, it freezes at exactly 4.3 GB. is there some setting I need to change? and what drivers will I need? this is the computer in question if that helps
https://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-Pavilion- ... /806935667
thanks for any help that may or may not come anytime soon.
my final words, linux sucks NOPERS LETSGOOO
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MattKC
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Re: need help with windows installs

Post by MattKC »

The Windows installer won't boot by simply by dragging the ISO onto the USB (the reason the copy stops is probably because you're reaching the FAT32 maximum file size limit, but either way, that won't work). Your best bet is to use something like Rufus, or dd the ISO to it if you're doing this from Linux.
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SONIC122
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Re: need help with windows installs

Post by SONIC122 »

the problem is we dont have access to another windows PC so that might be difficult. would it be possible to make a rufus bootable USB stick for us? it would help a lot Dance Dance Dance
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Re: need help with windows installs

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I can't realistically make one for you, but there are other ways to make one. You'll just have to do it manually instead.

Method 1 - Just copy

If you have an older version of the Windows 10 ISO (pre-2018 or so), you can just extract the contents of the ISO and copy them straight to the USB, then it should boot with EFI (assuming the USB drive isn't partitioned in a strange way). Unfortunately, with newer ISOs this is no longer feasible because some of the files exceed 4GB, which means they won't fit on a FAT32 drive, which is required for EFI booting.

Method 2 - Just copy, but with an NTFS partition

It's possible to split the USB drive so that the boot section is on FAT32 (satisfying the EFI requirement), but the install files are on NTFS (which doesn't have the 4GB limit).

Standard disclaimer that there's a risk of losing data when playing around with disk partitioning, so ensure that anything important is backed up.

You can use GParted for an easy way to partition the drive on Linux. Select the USB drive in the drop down list on the top right, then select the Device menu, select "Create Partition Table", and select "msdos" in the type. This will erase everything on the drive, so make sure there's nothing important on there before clicking "apply".

Once that's done, using GParted, create a new FAT32 partition around 1GB in size, and then add a second partition that's NTFS and consumes the rest of the drive. Apply the changes.

You'll be copying files to both partitions, so you may want to label them so you can easily tell them apart. You can do this in GParted too by right clicking each partition and selecting "Label File System". After this, you're now done with GParted.

Extract the contents of the Windows ISO somewhere (right click > extract) and then use the following instructions to layout the files on the USB drive:
  1. Copy all of the ISO's extracted files EXCEPT the "sources" folder to your FAT32 partition.
  2. Copy the "sources" folder to the NTFS partition.
  3. Create an empty "sources" folder on the FAT32 partition.
  4. Copy boot.wim from the installer's "sources" folder into the FAT32 partition's "sources" folder.
  5. In the NTFS partition's "sources" folder, create a new text file called "ei.cfg" and add the following contents:

    Code: Select all

    [CHANNEL]
    Retail
    
  6. Save it.
Done! You should be able to boot this drive.

Method 3 - Use dd

Depending on who you ask, this is either the simplest or most advanced method.

Firstly determine what drive your USB is. You can do this with the aforementioned GParted, or the terminal command "sudo fdisk -l". It'll most likely be something like /dev/sda or /dev/sdb (the last letter is what will identify your USB specifically).

Once you know for sure which drive is your USB, you can run dd. This will erase all the contents of your USB, so make sure there's nothing important on there.

Open a terminal and use the following command:

Code: Select all

sudo dd if=<iso file> of=/dev/sdX bs=1M
Replace <iso file> with the actual path to your Windows ISO, and replace sdX with the actual identifier for your USB.

It will appear to hang and do nothing for minutes (or even an hour if your USB is particularly slow), but it will actually be copying. When it's done, you should get a bootable USB drive.

Hope this helps! Again, make sure anything important is backed up because there's always a chance partition/dd-ing could go wrong.
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SONIC122
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Re: need help with windows installs

Post by SONIC122 »

so in the windows 10 installer there is an option for "make a windows 10 bootable for another PC" or somthing like that, if i just did that would it still work?
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Re: need help with windows installs

Post by SONIC122 »

also im dumb SAWNIC , i dont really understand all of these filesystem terms. im very dumb about this stuff sorry. this is why me and my friend have been struggling with this stuff Thunking
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Re: need help with windows installs

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If you follow any of those methods, it will get you there. I don't really know what else to say, this is how you do it. Otherwise, just find a Windows 10 machine and run Rufus.
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Re: need help with windows installs

Post by SONIC122 »

ight thanks for the help :) sorry im so dumb lol
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