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 WinUSB in Ubuntu 15.10

WinUSB is a piece of software that allows you to make a bootable flashdrive for installing Windows by using a Linux computer. Currently this is the only graphical and easy to use method to do this on Linux. There are of course manual guides of doing this but it isn't that easy for inexperienced users. Unfortunately, neither this guide is for beginners. This guide will show you how you can install WinUSB in Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf.

Update: These instructions are not for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and newer. The only way to get it working in Xenial and above is to compile after patching the source code to work with wxWidgets 3.0. It is described in detail here.

There are currently some issues with the available builds of WinUSB:

• wrong dependencies: some older versions depend on grub package while Ubuntu uses grub-pc or grub-efi. Installing WinUSB as usual will force grub-pc or grub-efi removal thus rendering your computer non bootable.
• deprecated grub-install method. WinUSB uses the --root-directory argument to specify GRUB install location while it is recommended to use --boot-directory.
• Unspecified bootloader type. There is no --target argument for grub-install so you don't know whether a MBR bootloader or an EFI one will be installed.
• The previous issue raises a limitation. If GRUB decides to use the EFI bootloader, it will install it in a NTFS partition (that's how WinUSB formats the flashdrive) which makes it useless.