Create linux live usb on windows

With a bootable Ubuntu USB stick, you can:

Install or upgrade Ubuntu
Test out the Ubuntu desktop experience without touching your PC configuration
Boot into Ubuntu on a borrowed machine or from an internet cafe
Use tools installed by default on the USB stick to repair or fix a broken configuration

Creating a bootable Ubuntu USB stick from Microsoft Windows is very simple and we’re going to cover the process in the next few steps.

Alternatively, we also have tutorials to help you create a bootable USB stick from both Ubuntu and Apple macOS.

2. Requirements

A 4GB or larger USB stick/flash drive
Microsoft Windows XP or later
Rufus, a free and open source USB stick writing tool
An Ubuntu ISO file. See Get Ubuntu for download links

Take note of where your browser saves downloads: this is normally a directory called ‘Downloads’ on your Windows PC. Don’t download the ISO image directly to the USB stick! If using Windows XP or Vista, download version 2.18 of Rufus.

3. USB selection

Perform the following to configure your USB device in Rufus:

Launch Rufus
Insert your USB stick
Rufus will update to set the device within the Device field
If the Device selected is incorrect (perhaps you have multiple USB storage devices), select the correct one from the device field’s drop-down menu

You can avoid the hassle of selecting from a list of USB devices by ensuring no other devices are connected.

4. Boot selection and Partition scheme

Now choose the Boot selection. Choices will be Non bootable and FreeDOS. Since you are creating a bootable Ubuntu device select FreeDOS.

The default selections for Partition scheme (MBR) and Target system (BIOS (or UEFI-CSM)) are appropriate (and are the only options available).

5. Select the Ubuntu ISO file

To select the Ubuntu ISO file you downloaded previously, click the SELECT to the right of “Boot selection”. If this is the only ISO file present in the Downloads folder you will only see one file listed.

Select the appropriate ISO file and click on Open.

6. Write the ISO

The Volume label will be updated to reflect the ISO selected.

Leave all other parameters with their default values and click START to initiate the write process.

7. Additional downloads

You may be alerted that Rufus requires additional files to complete writing the ISO. If this dialog box appears, select Yes to continue.

8. Write warnings

You will then be alerted that Rufus has detected that the Ubuntu ISO is an ISOHybrid image. This means the same image file can be used as the source for both a DVD and a USB stick without requiring conversion.

Keep Write in ISO Image mode selected and click on OK to continue.

Rufus will also warn you that all data on your selected USB device is about to be destroyed. This is a good moment to double check you’ve selected the correct device before clicking OK when you’re confident you have.

If your USB stick contains multiple partitions Rufus will warn you in a separate pane that these will also be destroyed.

9. Writing the ISO

The ISO will now be written to your USB stick, and the progress bar in Rufus will give you some indication of where you are in the process. With a reasonably modern machine, this should take around 10 minutes. Total elapsed time is shown in the lower right corner of the Rufus window.

10. Installation complete

When Rufus has finished writing the USB device, the Status bar will be green filled and the word READY will appear in the center. Select CLOSE to complete the write process.

Congratulations! You now have Ubuntu on a USB stick, bootable and ready to go.

If you want to install Ubuntu, take a look at our install Ubuntu desktop tutorial.

Источник

How to Create Ubuntu Live USB in Windows

Brief: The tutorial shows the steps to create a bootable Ubuntu USB in Windows. Instructions are valid for all versions of Ubuntu Linux and Windows.

One of the first few steps for installing Ubuntu is to create bootable USB of Ubuntu.

There are several free live USB creation tools available in Windows. You may use any of these free applications.

In this tutorial, I’ll show two methods using two different applications for creating live Ubuntu USB:

Rufus (recommended)
Universal USB Installer

With a live USB, you can try Ubuntu without installing it on your computer. You can, of course, use the same live USB to install Ubuntu on a computer as well.

Let’s see the methods in detail.

Creating a live bootable Ubuntu USB in Windows

Before you start creating the bootable USB, let’s see get the essentials first.

Getting things ready

Make sure that you have the following:

A USB key (pen drive) with at least 4 GB of size with no important data on it (the USB key will be formatted)
Internet connection to download Ubuntu ISO (this could be done on any computer)
It would be a good idea to know if your system uses MBR or GPT (Rufus will create live USB accordingly)
You should also check if your system uses UEFI or legacy BIOS

Download Ubuntu ISO

ISO is basically an image file. You download this single file of around 2.4 GB and it consists of an “image” of Ubuntu Linux. You then use a tool to extract the content of the ISO file in a such a manner that you can boot the Ubuntu operating system from the USB itself.

Go to the Ubuntu website and choose the version of your choice. You may choose Ubuntu LTS if you do not want to upgrade your system every six to nine months.

You can also download Ubuntu via torrents from the alternative downloads link located on the same page.

Method 1: Make a live Ubuntu USB with Rufus (recommended)

Rufus is an excellent free and open source tool for making bootable Linux USB disks. On Windows, I prefer and recommend using Rufus.

If you prefer videos to text, I have made this video to show the steps in action.

Step 1: Download Rufus

Go to the website of Rufus and download the .exe file:

This is an exe file so you do not need to install Rufus. Just double-click on it to run it.

Step 2: Creating the live Ubuntu USB

Plug in your USB key (pen drive) to the computer. Now double click on the download Rufus exe file which should be in the Downloads folder.

When you run Rufus with the USB plugged in, it automatically recognizes it. If there are more than one USB keys plugged in, please ensure to select the correct USB under Device.

It may also automatically find the Ubuntu ISO. If not, you can always browse to the ISO by clicking on the SELECT button.

I hope you have checked the partitioning scheme and BIOS type as I mentioned in the prerequisite section. Based on that, select the Partition Scheme and Target System in Rufus.

Everything looks good? Hit the START button.

You may be asked to choose how to write the image. Choose ‘Write in ISO Image mode’:

Making Live Usb With Rufus

It will take a few minutes to complete the process. You’ll see a green signal when the live USB is ready.

I’ll show you how to boot from the live USB in a moment. Let’s see another method of creating bootable Linux USB.

Method 2: Using Universal USB Installer for making bootable Linux USB

Go to the project website and download the latest version of Universal USB Installer.

Plugin the USB drive in the computer and run Universal USB Installer. You need to do the following things now:

Select Ubuntu under step 1
Browse to the location of downloaded Ubuntu ISO in Step 2 section
In Step 3, select the USB drive and also check the option to format it.

It will present you with obvious warnings, click Yes.

Wait for sometime for the process to complete. You can push it to background, if you like.

That said, your Ubuntu USB should be created in few minutes.

How to boot from live Ubuntu USB

Once the live USB is created, you can proceed with testing Ubuntu in live mode. The bootable USB can be used on any system, not only on the one where you created it.

Plug in the live USB on the desired computer. What you need to do is restart or power on your computer.

At the screen that shows the logo of your system manufacturer, press the F2 or F10 or F12 key. You may try pressing all of them one by one if you are not sure of the key. But be quick when you do that otherwise it will boot into the operating system.

This key is different for different brand of computers. Some may even use Esc or Del keys for this purpose.

Quickly press F2, F10 or F12 keys at the screen showing your system manufacturer’s logo

In the BIOS settings, normally, you should see a screen like this. Here, you use the arrow keys to move down to USB option and press enter to boot from the USB. Please note that the screen may look different in different systems.

If things go right, you should see a screen like below that gives you the option to “Try Ubuntu without installing” and “Install Ubuntu”. Both methods will provide you the option to install Ubuntu.

I prefer choosing “Try Ubuntu without installing”. That’s the live mode, and you can take the look and feel of the system. If you like it, you can choose to install Ubuntu. Note that if you make any changes to the live Ubuntu system like saving some files or installing applications, your changes will be lost if you boot from the live USB again.

Please keep in mind that some systems may not allow you to boot from a bootable USB. If you see some error (like PCIe initialization on Dell systems) or cannot boot from the USB, you should disable secure boot and the try booting from the USB again.

Considering that you are just starting, I advise to follow this beginner’s guide to Ubuntu and learn how to use Ubuntu. Let me know if you need some help.

Like what you read? Please share it with others.

Источник

SDB:Create a Live USB stick using Windows

Version: 12.2+ This applies to openSUSE 12.2 and above.

Using Etcher

Download the current ISO image of openSUSE Leap or Tumbleweed. The filename ends with «.iso».
Download, install and start Etcher
Select the openSUSE .iso file you just downloaded using the «Select Image» button.
Plug a USB drive into you computer, if it’s the only drive connected to your computer, it will be automatically selected. If not, select it.

Using Rufus

Download the current ISO image of openSUSE Leap or Tumbleweed. The filename ends with «.iso».
Download and start Rufus
Plug a USB drive into you computer and select it in Rufus (see screenshot)

Using ImageUSB

Download ImageUSB and follow the instructions on their page.

Using SUSE Studio ImageWriter

We used to have SUSE Studio ImageWriter compiled for windows, but this is not maintained anymore. Feel free to fork it and build/maintain the windows version yourself.

Using GRUB4DOS

This method will keep all current data in your USB medium. Demonstration is provided in this video. Note: These instruction will not work, if your computer boots via UEFI (like most computers made after

2011-2012 and all computers with preinstalled Windows 8/8.1/10); at first you must go to BIOS, enable Legacy boot (i.e. dissable UEFI/secure boot option)!

Copy ISO into «boot» folder of USB flash.
Extract «initrd» and «linux» files into «boot» folder of USB medium. These files located in boot\i386\loader or boot\x86_64\loader directory of ISO image. For ISO mounting you can use, for example, Pismo File Mount Audit Package.
GRUB4DOS installation into MBR of USB flash:
1. download RMPrepUSB and install it;
2. start RMPrepUSB;
3. select your medium;
4. click «Install GRUB4DOS»;
5. confirm GRUB installation to MBR;
6. confirm GRUB installation to selected medium;
7. confirm GRLDR copying into selected medium.
Create «menu.lst» file in root folder of USB key. Content of «menu.lst» should be (in both places – in line 2 and in line 5 – replace openSUSE.iso with real name of your ISO file):

Reboot your computer from USB stick.

Troubleshooting

Verifying checksum of downloaded files

If you need to verify that the file you’ve just downloaded is correct, you can use the CertUtil program (At least on windows10)

Write access problems

If you get write access problems with the USB drive you can try to reformat the drive in Windows prior to writing the image.

This situation would happen very rarely, but in the even that your computer doesn’t boot from the LiveUSB/DVD from the steps above, you might try the following procedure.

Unlike fdisk, diskpart will perform changes as you enter them, therefore, there is no write instruction.

Источник

Create linux live usb on windows