tut: "How to Reinstall Windows 10 with this media"

itsme1 said:

I am not sure, it is this method to make two partitions on the usb drive.


Create bootable USB installer if install.wim is greater than 4GB

As I explained above, to boot and install as UEFI, the USB installation files, on most computers, must be on a fat32 partition.
Some programs, like Rufus, create two partitions on the USB: One Fat32 to have the boot loader and a second as NTFS to have the big install.wim.

I normally do a single fat32 partition and split the install.wim into smaller swm files.

Before I used rufus, I stopped using it because I made a laptop that could not disable secure boot in the bios. I didn't know rufus was doing two partitions. I believed only one ntfs partition!

itsme1 said:

Before I used rufus, I stopped using it because I made a laptop that could not disable secure boot in the bios. I didn't know rufus was doing two partitions. I believed only one ntfs partition!

You can copy all files and folders to a NTFS partition, set as active and it will boot as Legacy but not as UEFI.
If you copy all files and folders to a Fat32 partition, set as active it will boot as Legacy and UEFI

sygnus21 said:

@Megahertz, Is Rufus really required for what the OP is wanting to do? Can't they just follow the tutorial without need of Rufus?

Thanks.

You only need a USB installation drive if you need to do maintenance (boot repair etc) or do do a Clean install
To do a Repair install you can use Setup from the USB installation drive or if you have a Win 10 installation iso, mount it and run setup

As I wrote above, if you want to Clean Install as UEFI-GPT (and OP has a new MB that certainly has a UEFI BIOS) you must boot the USB installation drive as UEFI.
To make the USB installation drive you can:
- Use MCT as it uses a high compressed install.esd file. The USB will be Fat32.
- If you already have a Win 10 iso and sources\install.wim > 4G (like OP does), you can split it into smaller swm files and transfer to a Fat32 USB partition, OR you can use RUFUS that will create a multi partition USB drive.

Once you create the USB installation drive:
As you have a new MB, you should install as UEFI-GPT
Detach any other drives (SATA or Power cable) from the MB.
On BIOS, disable fast boot and secure boot (you can enable after installation)

During POST, press F? to launch the boot menu. You will see two options for the USB drive. USB UEFI (Name) and USB (Name). Select USB UEFI (Name).
Go to install and delete ALL partitions on the SSD till you have one and only one unallocated space and then proceed.
If you don't want to use MS account, don't enable updates or connect to the internet during installation.

sygnus21 said:

@Megahertz, Is Rufus really required for what the OP is wanting to do? Can't they just follow the tutorial without need of Rufus?

Thanks.

I did try the standard approach using diskpart as suggested by @Megahertz, as I have already described above. The outcome was exactly the same: it doesn't work (as far as Reinstalling Windows 10 with this media), though it does boot the same in either case. I've also posted that the Reinstall Windows 10 with this media tutorial has been edited today to say that the tutorial no longer works because of changes made to Windows. Not because of Rufus.

Since you keep mentioning "follow the tutorial", here is the tutorial right here that tells how to use Rufus and where I'd heard of it for the first time very recently: Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10

OPTION TWO
Use "Rufus" to create Bootable Window 10 USB for Legacy BIOS and UEFI

The end result seems to be that there is currently no way to do a repair-install if my laptop gets to the point where Windows won't start. Then I'd have to try to restore from a System Image, or do an install wherein I lose my data, or [edit: after restoring my already made System Image] revert back to trouble-free 1909 from my current problem-filled 2004 and try to re-update from my 2004 ISO.

- - - Updated - - -

Megahertz said:

- Use MCT as it uses a high compressed install.esd file.

A minor point: the reason I'm very hesitant to use MCT is
(1) as described, my slow connection would require ~11 hours, and I already have a suitable ISO on hand
(2) when I did the forced March 10th 5GB update, I downloaded around 1GB when WU announced that the download had failed and I had to start over from the beginning. OTOH, with the URL to the ISO given by HieDoc, I can resume a stalled download (which In fact I did do when downloading the ISO via Free Download Manager). AFAIK, the MCT has no ability to resume or pause downloads.

I'm going to mark this as solved, because the reason it doesn't work is now known. It was worth it to learn about diskpart from @Megahertz anyway, for future use as that is more straightforward and likely less prone to complications than Rufus.

And btw, another reason to want a bootable disk to be able to do a repair-install is that if Windows is fouled up, then the repair-install might not work (because permissions are fouled up, or the Crypto Service won't stop tying up the HDD, as examples of problems which occurred for me after the forced update).

sygnus21 said:

Thanks for the feedback and good luck.

Thank you, sygnus.