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Creating an MS Windows 8 bootable ISO

http://www.redmondpie.com/download-windows-8-iso-x86-x64-file-directly-from-microsoft

These instructions will give you a bootable MS Windows 8 installation ISO with the following properties (you must do this procedure from a Microsoft OS):

  • OS sub-type (“Professional”, etc.): Determined by product key
  • Architecture (32-bit/64-bit): Determined by the OS where you're running the tool
  1. Click “Install Windows 8”
  2. Enter your MS Windows 8 product key
  3. Wait for the installation files to download (about 3 GB)
  4. Choose “Install by creating media”
  5. Choose “ISO file”

You can then burn the resulting ISO image to a DVD or USB drive for installation as usual (dd, etc.).

Making a bootable USB thumb drive from Microsoft's ISO image

So, for some reason you can't just dd the ISO to the thumb drive; it won't create a valid partition table and it won't boot (although Linux will still see the raw UDF filesystem). So…

Create an MBR partition table (aka "msdos") with a partition at least 9GB in size

% sudo parted /dev/sdx       ## Run parted on thumb drive
parted> mklabel msdos        ## Create MBR partition table
parted> mkpart primary NTFS  ## Create a partition marked for NTFS (must be at least 9GB)
parted> set 1 boot on        ## Make partition bootable

Create NTFS filesystem

If it's an older thumb drive and you're unsure of its physical condition, etc. then you can omit ”–quick” to do a full format with zeroing and a bad block check…takes forever though.

mkfs.ntfs --quick /dev/sdx

Mount the ISO and thumb drive and copy files over

Make sure to type this exactly; the presence/absence of trailing slashes is significant to rsync!

mount -o ro,loop file.iso /mnt      ## Mount ISO image at /mnt
mount /dev/sdx /mnt2                ## Mount thumb drive at /mnt2
rsync -rtvP --size-only /mnt/ /mnt2 ## Copy files without trying to preserve UNIX metadata

Reinstalling Win8 on a Lenovo Ideapad and keeping the SSD's caching benefits

Reset the WinXP activation loop

Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Activate-Windows-XP-Without-a-Genuine-Product-Key

  1. Press F8 during boot to get the advanced options menu
  2. Safe Mode with Command Prompt
  3. Type “explorer.exe” into the Command Prompt
  4. You should see a dialogue window pop up; click Yes/OK
  5. Open the Run dialog and run rundll32.exe syssetup,SetupOobeBnk (this command resets the Windows XP trial clock to 30 days)
  6. Click OK
  7. Restart
microsoftwindows.1495228493.txt.gz · Last modified: 2017/05/19 16:14 by dlicious
 
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