This article is about:
How to make a bootable Windows 8 DVD on Ubuntu Linux
where <iso path> should be replaced with your actual ISO images path and <device path> should be replaced with your USB device path.
Perhaps burning a disk into a portable USB device is quite easy for you. You might have done this work for quite some times to count. However, most of us don't know how to do this in a Ubuntu or Linux environment. USB flash bootable disk writing utility like UnetBootin or Universal USB Creator or Linux Live Creator are common examples, using which you can burn a bootable disk of any Linux distribution to a USB key. Using a USB flash drive to install a operating system is useful in many dimensions. It helps you easily install an operating system to your computer if you don't have a CD/DVD ROM drive or if it is not working at all. It saves you money of buying DVDs. You can try almost all modern operating system distributions without installing to your hard drive right from a USB key installation. Using a program like Unetbootin or others I have mentioned above , we can create live installation media so easily. Unetbootin is also available for Linux, that means you can burn your USB key with live installation media from Linux environment too. But when you try to create a live installation Flash drive with the above mentioned tools, they will not be of any help. I use a laptop running Windows and Ubuntu 12.04 in a dual boot mode. But some days back, somehow my Windows installation got crashed and I had to reinstall it. When I looked for a solution to burn the ISO image of Windows operating system to a USB flash drive from Ubuntu, I could do nothing with the available tools. However i found one small beautiful tool to burn Windows ISO files to USB key right from Linux. I easily burnt the Windows 8 ISO file to my USB flash drive and installed to my laptop and within half an hour, i got back my Windows 8 system. I am going to explain here how you can create a live USB flash installer for Windows 8 using Ubuntu Linux. You need to download and install one small program called WinUSB to achieve this task. Just follow the below mentioned steps:
1. Open terminal (you can use shortcut: by pressing Ctrl+alt+t). Add this repository first:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:colingille/freshlight
2. Get your system updated:
sudo apt-get update
3. Install WinUSB using the following command:
sudo apt-get install winusb
Now, WinUSB has two mode of operation. you can burn your Windows 8 ISO image or Windows 7 ISO from the terminal itself using WinUSB or you may use the graphical method. To do this from the terminal, run this command to format the USB key first:
sudo winusb --format <iso path> <device path>where <iso path> should be replaced with your actual ISO images path and <device path> should be replaced with your USB device path.
When the USB device is formatted, using the above method, install a Windows partition and edit the Master Boot Record. Run this command:
sudo winusb --install <iso path> <partition>
The above method of installing from Terminal works fine but you may also use the graphical method since WinUSB has a graphical user interface. Yo do so, follow these steps:
1. From the Unity panel(Windows key) search 'WinUSB' and click on the WinUSB program icon to launch.
2. Select the ISO image of Windows 8 / Windows 7 from your hard drive location clicking the browse button on
'From a disk image(iso):' option.
3. Select the target USB flash device on 'Target device' area.
4. then click on 'Install'. You are done in a few minutes when the program installs Windows 8/ Windows 7 to your USB drive.
Now reboot your system and boot from your USB key to install Windows. That's it. Good luck.
