HOWTO: Burn bootable USBs

[JayM]

Creating an MX/antiX Live USB with persistence in Windows:
Read section 2.2 of the MX User Manual and this article in the MX Wiki , and also watch the two videos. These will guide you through the entire process.

Creating an MX/antiX Live USB with persistence in another Linux distro:
MX Live USB Maker can be downloaded from GitHub and installed on other Linux systems then used to create a full-featured persistent MX or antiX USB. Or you can follow the one of the same (non-Rufus) procedures as when creating a live USB in Windows, creating a static bootable MX USB or a DVD using whatever USB- or DVD-burning tool that's included in the distro or dd from the command line, booting from it, running MX Live USB Maker and cloning MX to a second, full-featured USB. Or, you can boot your read-only MX USB, press F4 and select toram, then run Live USB Maker and clone your running (in RAM) MX system to the same USB stick you booted with, in full-featured mode! This is very handy if you don't have an extra USB stick.

Creating an MX/antiX Live USB or other Linux distro's USB in MX:
Read MX Live USB Maker's wiki help page for detailed instructions for creating bootable Linux USBs, both full-featured persistent MX or antiX USBs and read-only USBs for other distros.

Creating a UEFI-compatible, bootable Windows installation USB in MX Linux:
Step 1: Format your USB stick as NTFS using GParted. This may take several minutes.
Step 2: Install WoeUSB from the MX Test Repo using MX Package Installer and use it to burn your Windows image file to the USB. This may also take several minutes.

NOTE: Those with UEFI systems may find that they need to create gpt partition tables on their USBs instead of using the default msdos partitioning (though this isn't true for some Dell computers which require msdos partitioning, which is why it's the default.) In MX Live USB Maker this option is found after clicking on Show Advanced Options, and a gpt partition table will be automatically created as your burn the image to the USB. (Be sure to disable Secure Boot in your computer's UEFI system settings to boot your MX Live USB.) If you're creating a Windows installation USB in MX and you find that a gpt partition table is required, create it in GParted in the Device dropdown menu prior to formatting the device as NTFS. Creating a new partition table will delete all existing data and partitions on the USB stick, so do this prior to burning the Windows iso with WoeUSB.

[Eadwine Rose]

On creating the windows installation USB using Live USB maker, I tick the GPT partitioning option, size is 50 (default).

But then ticking "image mode" disables the advanced options button.

Will that still work then or do I need to use the full featured mode (I mean.. it is going against my logic there )

[JayM]

I was just going by the instructions I found here. I successfully made a bootable Windows 10 USB yesterday, but as I no longer have a computer with UEFI I couldn't experiment with or test making a UEFI-bootable Windows USB. I assumed that since those instructions have you first format your USB as NTFS, WoeUSB just burns the image and doesn't attempt to reformat the pendrive so it would also leave the partition table alone, meaning that whatever partitioning type was on the USB, msdos or gpt, would remain after the image was burned. But like I said, I don't have a computer I can test this theory on.

[Eadwine Rose]

Oh sorry.. should have mentioned I use Live USB maker, edited to add that in.

[asqwerth]

How can one use LUM to make a bootable Windows USB?

[Eadwine Rose]

Just got woeusb in the package installer test repo. Formatted the usb stick to ntfs using gparted and will use woeusb to create the bootable stick.

Wait and see. Cannot test that either until the system itself has been assembled.

Used these instructions here: https://itsfoss.com/bootable-windows-usb-linux/

[JayM]

Yesterday I tried making a bootable Windows 10 Enterprise (90-day trial version) installation USB in dd mode using LUM, and also using mintstick, and neither would boot but WoeUSB was successful in making a bootable Windows USB. (I was intending to test running MX 18.3 in a Hyper-V virtual machine but alas my CPU isn't SLAT-compatible.)

[Eadwine Rose]

Ah.. that is promising then, for me! Thanks :)

[JayM]

I was able to install Win10 Enterprise onto a spare HDD using the USB stick I'd created with woe, so it works. But again, I can't speak for those with UEFI computers as I no longer have one (and I hope I never do again, as much as I'd like a brand-new, fast computer: my experience with UEFI was that compared to regular BIOS getting things to boot properly is just a huge pain in the how's your father.)

[Pierre]

an lot of folks would not be aware that the MX Live USB Maker can be downloaded from GitHub and then run on other Linux Systems.
- - which can, actually be quite an handy tool, as it does have some extra options available