What are you saying? Extracting the iso to a FAT32 formatted usb thumbdrive works for both, Legacy BIOS AND UEFI.
extracting iso only works for making a uefi install USB drive. not a live OS. Whiel rufus/winusb and the like work, they will generally make a windows 10 that's only activated on the computer you made it on. need kms hacks to have a pre activated installation that runs from external drive as far as I know.
I don't understand what you mean by this. The FAT32 USB containing the extracted ISO boots UEFI and Legacy BIOS. The method of creation of the USB install media has nothing to do with the activation of the installed windows. With a MSDM, no need for any activation, Windows 8.1/10 readout the MSDM and autoselect the sku for the MSDM, installs it and as soon as the install goes online, it will activate. Same for when using a key and HWID (10 only). When there is no official activation available you can either generate a HWID for the install, or use a KMS solution, to activate the install. ps, KMS is not a hack, it's the official way for activating VL products, the difference is, KMS tools emulate a KMS server internally.
yeah not talking about installing FROM usb. talking about installing TO USB. i know how to install FROM usb just fine.
No, if MS removes the PortableOS registry key, and the os side code to make it work, rufus won't be able to help unless you stick to older windows 10. WIndows To Go works because of kernel support for running 10 portably.
That doesn't mean you can't still make a WTG drive. I felt my answer was rambling on long enough without going to maybe maybe nots on Microsofts end and I don't see them removing support for it any time soon if at all. Look at all the other deprecated features still hanging around. And every 20H1 build I've tried is still able to be used. I've also made Windows 7 WTG drives which is fully unsupported by Microsoft. Also, the way the WTG works doesn't have much if anything to do with the kernel supporting it. It has everything to do with methods of WIM deployment which is why you can make Windows 7 WTG drives. So unless MS goes to drastic lengths to remove this feature, like completely revamping the WIM API, it isn't going anywhere any time soon. They'll just stop development of their official tool to make WTG installations and maybe go so far as to remove the entry from the control panel but I highly doubt they will even bother removing the tool completely.
Sure, however you and other users started discussing WTG and then someone inevitably posts the link to MS discontinuing WTG so I felt it was my duty to set anyone who stumbles upon this thread mind at ease. Pointing out that though MS has plans of deprecating this feature, it is not the end of the world. You'll still be able to make WTG installs as long as the WIM api supports the deployment method used to create them.
But it also needs disabling of secure boot(at least my friend couldn't do it till he disabled secure boot on his laptop).
Secure boot can be a fickle beast no doubt. Both my laptops can boot Rufus made drives with secure boot enabled as long as they adhere to the UEFI standard. So no workarounds like using a small FAT32 partition for the boot files on the drive and the installation source on an NTFS partition which is the method that Rufus uses if your install.wim is larger than 4GB. I've also had better luck using fixed disks rather than removable disks.
Yes. I use this. 16 GB pendrv; 1. boot partition. 2. NTFS partition. This is the Windows installation media. Install.wim > 8GB. (Reference OS + installed programs.) I installed it on 480 Acer laptops. 8 pcs 16 GB USB 3.1 pendrv. Completed in 2 weeks.
Exactly!But RS5 onwards this is the norm now with win 10 ISOs so an avg user(like my friend) will most likely run into this issue when using Rufus.Of course a more knowledgeable user will simply use tools/scripts that split/compress large wim file but an avg user just looking to make a bootable pen drive from latest win 10 iso using rufus,disabling secure boot is must.
On my (W8.1) OS Bootable flash drive I created a few years ago that still works, I created it w/ Windows to Go w/ the recommended Flash drive - a Kingston DT Ultimate G2 & it still works when plugged into Win10 or MS Server 2016 Essentials machines. I was even able to partition the flash drive for a storage partition for easy retrieval of stuff to move to Main Rig. Lastly it worked great to convert (w/ Diskpart) 3 MBR HDDs to GPT format, amazingly I never needed a product key w/ the flash drive OS.