There are a lot of programs around to help you download Windows 10 ISO and prepare bootable USB. However, only the official Media Creation Tool can both download the Windows 10 ISO and prepare the bootable USB using the downloaded ISO. While the official Media Creation Tool is quite good, it doesn’t prepare the bootable USB as fast as the popular Rufus software.
Rufus is fast with user friendly interface, available in many languages, and updated very often. Good news is that you no longer need to use the Media Creation Tool or any other software to do that. Rufus can do it for you as it can download Windows 10 ISOs from Microsoft servers and prepare the bootable USB.
Here is how to use Rufus to download Windows 10 and then prepare a bootable USB:
Step 1: Connect an 8GB+ USB drive which you would like to make a bootable USB.
Step 2: Download Rufus EXE. or its Portable version . In addition to the regular installer, a portable version of Rufus is also available for users who don’t want to install the program.
Step 3: In the Device drop-down box, select your USB drive. Select Disk or ISO image from the Boot selection drop down box, click the small down arrow next to the Select button and then be sure to select the Download option.
Step 4: Now, click the Download button to download the Figo script which once downloaded will display the following dialog where you need to select Windows 10 (or Windows 8.1 if you wish to download it) and then click OK button to see a list of Windows 10 versions.
Select the latest version of Windows 10, click the OK button again, select the edition of Windows 10 (Home, Pro or Education), click the Continue button, select the language, click Continue again, and then select the architecture (32-bit or 64-bit).
Step 5: Finally, click the Download button, select a location to save the ISO file and then click the Save button to begin downloading the Windows 10 ISO file. If you would like to use a web browser to download the ISO, you can do so by selecting Download using browser option.
Step 6: Once the ISO is downloaded, click the START button to format the connected USB drive and make it as bootable USB.
Changes in Rufus 4.3:
- Add support for Rock Ridge symlink preservation when NTFS is used
- Add an exception to enforce NTFS for Linux Mint’s LMDE
- Add an expert feature to restrict a Windows installation to S Mode
- Fix persistence support for Debian 12 when booted in BIOS mode
- Fix a regression that prevented the opening of .vhd images
- Update UEFI:NTFS to report a more explicit error on bootmgr security issues
- Improve the search for conflicting processes by running it in a background thread
- Improve support for Slax Linux
Homepage – https://rufus.ie
File Size: 1.37 MB
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