Installing professional Windows 10 from a USB flash drive

Installing each new release of Windows is easier than the previous one and requires less and less effort from the user. With the release of Windows 10, this task has become even simpler: now, to install the operating system on your computer, you don’t need any special knowledge or clever applications. You don’t even need a Windows distribution kit - the installation program has “learned” to download it itself. She herself creates the installation media - a DVD or flash drive. The user can only respond to requests and follow instructions that are clear even to those who do it for the first time.

Today we will tell you how to clean install Windows 10 on any laptop and desktop PC. A clean installation means installing an OS on a medium that does not contain an operating system (for example, on a new computer or formatted hard drive). Or where it exists, but must be completely rewritten without saving the installed software, accounts and settings. By the way, don’t worry about the license: if you install a system to replace a legally activated one, you can keep it. And we will not hide from you what needs to be done for this.

What you will need

• Bootable media for recording the Windows 10 distribution. It can be a USB flash drive of 3 GB or more, a DVD, a portable or internal hard drive. Since the vast majority of users prefer to install Windows from a flash drive, we will consider this method as the main one.
• or a set of files.
• A utility for transferring system files to installation media. If you are going to install Windows 10 on a PC with UEFI (an improved “BIOS”), you can do without it - you just need to copy the distribution files and folders to a flash drive. By the way, in Windows 8 and 10, an ISO image can be opened in Explorer as a regular folder, but in earlier systems this will require a special application, for example, any archiver program.
• The computer on which you will prepare the bootable USB flash drive.

Preparing a flash drive

If you do not have a pre-prepared Tens distribution kit, it is easier and more convenient to have the Microsoft Media Creation Tools utility download it and burn it to a flash drive or DVD using it.

The utility does not require installation on a PC; you just need to run it with administrator rights.

After launching Media Creation Tools:

• In the “License Terms” window, click “Accept”.

• To the question “What do you want to do?” We answer: “Create media for another computer.”

• In the “Selecting parameters” section, we determine the system language, edition (“home for one PC” or “Windows 10”) and architecture (bit) - 64 or 32. If the selection options are inactive, the “Use recommended settings” checkbox should be unchecked.

• Next, select a drive: USB - to create a bootable flash drive, or ISO file - to upload an image that you will later burn to DVD.

• Having selected the USB device, click “Next” and wait 30-50 minutes while the program downloads the distribution and creates installation media. At this time, the computer is available for use.

• A message will inform you that it is time to proceed with installation: “The USB flash memory device is ready.”

If you downloaded the distribution in advance or do not have stable Internet access, use other tools to create Windows 10 installation media. For example:

• Rufus. Works without installation. To write the operating system to a flash drive, you just need to specify the location of the distribution kit, as well as determine the partition layout and the type of system interface: MBR for computers with BIOS (old), GPT for computers with UEFI (new, released after 2013) or MBR for computers with UEFI ( if the PC with UEFI has disks marked according to the MBR standard).

• . This utility is as simple as Rufus. In the “Add to USB disk” section, just check the “Windows Vista/7/8/10, etc.” item, specify the path to the Windows 10 image and click the “Go” button.

• Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. This proprietary Microsoft utility is capable of transferring all versions of Windows, starting with Windows 7, to USB flash drives and DVDs in just 4 steps.

In addition to these, there are many other free utilities for creating installation media. You can use any - the result will be the same.

Let's start the installation

Installation launch options

There are two ways to start the Windows 10 installation:

• From under a running system. Can be used if you plan to reinstall it or install Ten from scratch on another disk partition.
• When booting from installation media (via BIOS). A universal option that is suitable for installing the system on a new computer and for reinstalling an old copy of Windows.

If you choose the first option, open the boot disk or flash drive in Explorer and run the Setup.exe file.

If you select the second one, boot the computer from the installation media.

How to boot a PC or laptop from a flash drive

The BIOS Setup utility has a different interface on different computers. To enter it, you must immediately press a certain key after turning on the machine and the manufacturer’s splash screen appears on the screen. Which one is usually indicated at the bottom of the splash screen. Most often these are Delete, F2 and Escape, sometimes F1, F3, F10, F12 or a combination of several keys.

After opening the utility, go to the “Boot” section. In the BIOS Setup Utility version shown in the screenshot, this is a separate tab in the top menu.

In other versions it is not present as such, and the necessary settings are collected in the “Advanced Bios Features” section. In order not to confuse anything at the most crucial moment, study the BIOS interface of your computer in advance and figure out what is where.

In the "Boot" section you will see a list of devices from which the machine can boot. The first place is usually the hard drive. You need to make sure that first of all the computer checks the boot files not on it, but on the flash drive. To do this, using the arrow keys, as well as F5, F6, plus and minus (the hint is located in the right half of the BIOS window), move the USB device to the top of the list. To save the settings and exit the utility, press F10.

In graphical versions of UEFI, there is no need to change the order of devices; just click on the USB device. After this, the PC will restart and begin booting from the selected media.

Main part of the installation

Most of the Windows 10 installation process takes place without active user interaction. You will only have to work at the beginning and a little at the end.

So, the first thing you have to do is select the operating system language, time formats, currency formats and the main keyboard layout. If you downloaded the Russian version of Windows, the default language will be Russian.

After defining the language settings, click the "Install" button.

Accept the license terms. To move on to the next task now and in the future, click the “Next” button.

Now you need to determine the installation type - as an update or “custom” (in previous versions it was called “clean”). We, accordingly, need the second type.

Let's move on to choosing the place where the new Windows will “settle”. If the hard drive is not partitioned or you want to change their proportions, select the desired area of ​​the disk and click “Create”.

In the "Size" field, enter the number of megabytes that you allocate for the system partition. Windows 10 64-bit requires at least 32 GB. Click Apply. If necessary, create other partitions in the same way, and then format them.

Attention! If you want to install the system while maintaining the license, do not format the disk, but carry out the installation in the same partition where the previous activated copy of Windows is located. The second important factor in maintaining activation is that the new system must be the same version as the old one. If you install Windows 10 Ultimate instead of Home, you will not be able to do without losing your license!

After finishing working with the disk, you can relax - for the next 40-60 minutes the process will proceed without your participation. If you want, just watch him.

Copying files will take approximately 1/4 of the time.

The computer will then reboot and continue the installation. Most of the time the Windows logo will hang on the screen and the “wheel” will rotate. You can see what stage the process is at by the messages at the bottom of the screen.

It's time to move on to action again, because the end of the installation is approaching. When you see a proposal to increase the speed, click the “Use standard settings” button. You can change them later if you wish.

After the update, you will have to create your first user account. By default, it will be assigned administrative rights. Everything is simple here - enter your username and, if necessary, enter a password.

Finally, the long-awaited desktop. Everything is ready, the installation of Windows 10 is complete. We hope it didn’t bore you too much, because now you have to set up the network, design your desktop, install applications and other pleasant chores to “get used to” the new OS.

If during installation Windows did not require you to enter a license key, check whether activation is in place. Open the context menu of the Start button and go to system settings.

Activation information is located at the bottom of the basic computer information window. In our example, it was not completed, since “ten” was installed in the virtual machine from scratch.

If you were able to reinstall without losing your license, you can delete the C:\Windows.old folder, which contains the files from the previous copy of the system. They are no longer needed - the activation information has been successfully transferred to the new one.

How to install a system from a hard drive

There are situations when neither flash drives nor DVDs are at hand. In short, nothing except the hard drive of the same computer on which you need to install Windows 10.

To install “tens” from a hard drive, you must meet 3 conditions:

• Have a distribution. More convenient - in the form of a set of files and folders. If you only have an ISO image, you will have to unpack it, for example, using an archiver application (WinRAR, 7-zip and analogues) or Windows Explorer (only in G8 and 10).
• Have an additional partition on your hard drive with a capacity of 3 GB or more. Preferably free.
• The computer must boot from the same disk. If not, then you will need media with a Live CD/Live USB (portable operating system), like BartPE, Alkid Live CD, etc. You can easily find their images on the Internet.

The storage medium for the installation files will be the hard drive, or more precisely, its additional partition. You will need an operating system to copy the distribution and create its boot loader.

Installation procedure

• Boot your computer from your hard drive or portable OS media.
• Copy the files and folders of the Windows 10 distribution to the root of the additional partition (not the one in which the system will be installed).

• Rename the boot file (bootmgr), for example, to "Win10". The length of his name should not exceed 5 characters.

Now you have to create a distribution boot loader using the BootICE utility. You can use other boot management tools instead, but we chose BootICE because we think it's the simplest and most convenient.

• Run the utility (it does not require installation). In the “Physical disk” section, select the computer’s hard drive from the “Destination disc” list. Click the Process MBR button.

• Check "Grub4DOS" and click "Install/Config".

• In the “Rename GRLDR” section, write a new name for the Windows 10 download file (as you remember, we called it “Win10”) and click “Save to disk”. Click OK on the bootloader creation success message and close the utility.

All that remains is to restart the computer. The next time you start it, the Windows 10 installation program will take control, and then it will be the same as when installing the system from a flash drive.

As you know, many modern laptops no longer have a DVD drive. In addition, installing Windows 10 from a USB drive is much faster than from an optical drive. Therefore, this article specifically describes step-by-step instructions for you on how to how to install Windows 10 from a bootable USB flash drive. Almost every action has a screenshot attached.

Recording to a USB flash drive

After selecting boot from USB drive you should see a message Press any key to boot from CD or DVD… and press any key as quickly as possible:

If after this the Windows 10 logo appears on a black background, then the installation program has started downloading and you did everything correctly:

Installing Windows 10 from a USB flash drive on a computer or laptop

So, after successfully loading from a USB drive, we begin the actual process of installing Windows 10 from a flash drive, in which your direct participation will be required.

Now Install:

Check the box I accept the license terms and again Further:

If your hard drive is completely empty, you can simply press Further. In this case, the boot and system partitions of Windows 10 will be created automatically. And later it will be possible, if necessary.

If the hard drive contains the necessary information, format only the boot (100 MB or 350 MB) and system partitions, and leave the rest alone.

There is no need to delete individual sections!

If there are partitions on the disk without important information, we recommend that you delete them all and repartition the disk. By the way, it is advisable to allocate at least 100 GB for the system. There is no need to create a 350 MB boot partition manually! Otherwise, you will end up with two such batches. The fact is that the Windows 10 setup program will one way or another create one itself.

After this, the installation process will start and all you have to do is wait:

On this screen, you can configure some Windows 10 settings or select the default settings:

Click Continue or Continue:

Enter your username, password, password confirmation, and hint. After that click Further or Next:

This completes the installation of Windows 10 from a USB flash drive. Now you can start installing drivers, programs and customizing the operating system to your liking.

This article will provide tips on how to install Windows 10 using a flash drive without losing data. There are no fundamental differences between installing this operating system from a DVD or CD.

An important point is the volume of the storage device, be it a flash drive or disk. Its volume should be at least 3 GB.

The first step is to create a special bootable media that will be used to install the operating system. It is best to use a special utility for these purposes on the official Microsoft website. Provided that you already have a license key for Windows 10.

I’ll tell you a little later about whether it’s possible to install this version of the OS without a key, and whether it’s possible to install Windows 10 on top of widows 7.

1. Create a bootable USB flash drive.
2. Send boot to BIOS.
3. Install OS.

How to create media

To download the utility for creating media for the Windows 10 operating system on the official Microsoft website, you should use the exact bitness that your system currently has. You can find this out in the “System” tab in the Control Panel or by right-clicking on “My Computer” and selecting the “Properties” section.

In this utility you can download original images of the latest operating system. In the installation window you will be asked to select the language and OS version to install. After that, wait until all the files are downloaded to the flash drive or disk, depending on what you chose.

For other cases, when you already have your own OS image, it is simply copied to a flash drive. It must be formatted in FAT 32 format. This can be done using a variety of free programs, as well as using the command line or the Ultra Iso program.