Load Win10 on a USB and boot from it?  

Folks,

I'm trying to do some troubleshooting with my current install of Win10. I've been told that booting from a USB would narrow down my issue.

I see tutorials about how to download the Win10 iso onto a USB to install it from that usb. That is NOT what I want to do.

I want to load a functioning copy of Win10 (not copied from my computer), onto a USB stick and then boot from that USB and have a "clean" Win10 run my machine.

How do I go about doing that?

Thanks,
Ken

Jacee said:

I burned the download Win10 .ISO to a DVD, using imgburn. Pretty easy!

You aren't understanding what @iamc3k is trying to do.

That last that I knew, Rufus could do it:
Rufus

You could try something like this:
How to run Windows 10 from a USB flash drive?

pparks1 said:

You could try something like this:
How to run Windows 10 from a USB flash drive?

Thanks! I haven't tried it, but that seems EXACTLY what I'm looking to do.

Ken

I think Rufus can do it - free. Aomei partition assistant free (standard edition) also does >>> win2go

Hi folks

@iamc3k

None of these actually answer the OP's specific point -- I think he wants to CLONE existing physical system to an external USB drive and then boot that up as a running system -- RUFUS AFAIK will install a new Windows to a USB device but I don't think (although could be wrong) that it will Clone an actual running phsysical Windows installation.

Two choices here then

1) Get HASLEO Win to USB -- that works a treat but is not free, Note if you use this and your existing system is a UEFI one ensure the target USB device is GPT and has a small efi partition on it of around 100 mb.

2) Any Linux distro whatsoever will boot from external devices -- install a Linux distro, then add Windows as a VM on it.

I think some type of macrium VI boot also can work but I think in this case you need at least to start the boot process from the internal "C" drive. Suggestions 1 and 2 here will work even if there's no HDD's in the machine at all or if they are there they could be totally broken.

BTW you will probably need to re-activate Office if you have it -- Windows activation might be OK - certainly if running the target Windows system on the original computer.

The aoemi partition assistant is a bit of a con here as this is a paid for feature and AFAIK it doesn't work on the latest versions of Windows.

Cheers
jimbo