Install WinUSB on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

WinUSB is probably the only GUI tool that allows you to create bootable USB drives with Windows from Linux. It hasn't been updated for a long time and there are no packages for newer Ubuntu versions. Until the release of 16.04, WinUSB could be installed from existing DEB packages for previous Ubuntu releases. But things have changed with the update of wxWidgets to version 3.0 in the default repositories. WinUSB GUI depends on wxWidgets > 2.8.4 and all curent builds are based on 2.8 releases of the library.

Let's mention again that WinUSB can't make UEFI bootable drives! Only the old MBR type and only NTFS formatted.

This guide has also been tested on Ubuntu 16.10. If you're using an older version of Ubuntu you may get WinUSB working by following this guide. Otherwise, you need to compile it with wxWidgets 3.0. This article will describe the procedure plus the extra tweaks you must make to ensure WinUSB works as it should.

How to install Ubuntu from Minimal CD (with UEFI)

Besides standard disc images, Ubuntu also offers a small image of only ~30...40 MB named Minimal CD. This contains a text-based installer, so you can use it on computers that fail to load the graphical environment of the installer. Only the packages required to run the installer are on the actual image and anything else will be downloaded from a repository that you can choose.

This has advantages and disadvantages. If you have a fast internet connection, this is actually a good way of installing Ubuntu or any of its official derivatives like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu or Ubuntu MATE. You will only get the packages you requested at their available versions from the repositories. This means that once installed, your OS will be updated. The disadvantages are of course related to the internet connection. The minimal ISO cannot boot in EFI mode yet you can make it EFI bootable. Also, the text installer may be a little difficult for inexperienced users.

This tutorial shows how to make an EFI bootable media from Minimal ISO and also how to install Ubuntu from it whether you're in EFI mode or not.

The ISO is less than 40 MB, thus it can be burned even on 80 mm CD or you can make a bootable flash drive. This is the perfect choice for any old, low speed USB flash drive. In order to make the bootable USB drive, you can use Rufus on Windows and dd command on Linux. You can get the Minimal ISO at http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/.

UEFI NTFS: Bootable Windows USB from Linux

Installing Windows from USB drive in UEFI mode requires a FAT32 formatted USB drive. How to create that bootable USB is described in Make a bootable Windows USB from Linux (Ubuntu). However that method is unusable in some cases where install.wim is larger than 4 GB.

The procedure that is about to follow should work with any Windows version that supports UEFI boot (Windows 7 on 64 bits and all the newer versions). It has been successfully tested only in VirtualBox but it should work on real hardware too.

We will make two partitions on the USB drive, one that is FAT32 and will hold an EFI bootloader and the other is NTFS and holds Windows installation files. The bootloader will use a NTFS driver to read the NTFS partition and boot Windows.

Make a bootable Windows USB from Linux

Ubuntu has already an application called Startup Disk Creator, but this can only be used to make Linux bootable USB drives. To make a Windows bootable USB there was an application called WinUSB but it is no longer under active development. The following guide has been updated and works on any Linux distribution as long as it has GRUB and GParted installed and can make bootable USB for any Windows version newer than Vista: Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. UEFI boot is only supported for Windows 7 x64 and newer.

Before starting, let's mention that there are two types of boot methods. There is the MBR code type where the bootable executable is stored in a reserved section at the beginning of the storage device. And there is the EFI type, where the boot loader executable file is stored at a standard path in an FAT32 filesystem. You must decide in advance what you will use. There are some variables for each boot type. If you have no idea what to use, the most common setup that works with unmodified Windows sources, is msdos partition table with fat32 filesystem and flag the partition with boot. In this way you will get both an MBR and UEFI bootable drive.

The latest Windows release can be downloaded from Microsoft as an ISO image. The ISO download page is available to non-Windows users. Otherwise, you are directed to download Media Creation Tool, which is Windows only software.