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I'm a computer novice and i wanna reinstall my windows 10 for my HP laptop since it was crashed, but i have a macbook pro, so I was wonder if it's possible to create a windows 10 bootable installer USB on macOS without terminal?

windows-10-setup

In case anyone stumbles onto this thread I'm going to give what I believe to be the easiest solution to this problem. You don't need to download any new software to do this, everything is already included in current Mac OS. Sorry if this is a breach of etiquette (commenting on an old thread!)

The easiest thing to do is just to reformat your drive to 'ExFat' using Disk Utility. Here are the steps! For reference I'm running Mac OS Monterey (v12.0.1)

1. Open Disk utility
   

2. Select drive you want to be the boot drive
   

3. Select "Erase" from the top menu
   

4. Select "ExFAT" in the format dropdown and confirm

After this process you are able to move larger files into your USB drive. I just did this with a Sandisk 32GB drive and it worked perfectly. All this said, I have yet to actually use this drive to INSTALL Windows as I'm building the computer tomorrow. Will report back if I run into any issues.

EDIT
The ExFAT formatted drive with Windows ISO did not work as a bootable drive. I had to create a Windows partition on my hard drive and boot into that to make a functioning boot drive.

1 Vote 1 ·

Your instructions makes no sense!

What does that even mean:
The easiest thing to do is just to reformat your drive to 'ExFat' using Disk Utility. Here are the steps! For reference I'm running Mac OS Monterey (v12.0.1
After this process you are able to move larger files into your USB drive

So you're saying after formatting a usb to exfat32 I will be able to move "Larger" files onto it...Just wow!

Your answer deserves a downvote.

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I mean, yeah that is exactly what I was saying. And it certainly does allow you to put larger files into a drive. As far as I could tell it was the only way to do this on Monterey. I tried every other drive format and none of them except ExFAT allowed for the moving of files over 5 GB.

The issue was that the drive wasn’t bootable afterwards in that format.

Also there would have been a million ways of stating your issue with my post without being an ass. Choose one of those next time, kay?

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This trick does not work at all! Only a small portion of computers recognize exFAT USB as bootable device. It failed on my Dell desktop. FAT32 is more recommended. In addition, a single copy-and-paste of Windows 10 ISO file is not going to make the drive bootable.

My advice is:

If you are on a Mac running macOS Catalina or old macOS versions, then Boot Camp Assistant app is pretty good for this as it won't work on Big Sur and Monterey.

Boot Camp user guide: https://support.apple.com/guide/bootcamp-assistant/welcome/mac

Otherwise, try UUByte ISO Editor app instead, it is more suitable for beginners. It only took me 7 minutes to make a bootable Windows 10 USB on my MacBook Air (Big Sur with M1 chip) . No commands and hassle free. You can refer to this step-by-step guide (Method 2):

https://www.uubyte.com/make-windows-10-bootable-usb-on-macos-big-sur.html

Kindly let me know if anyone needs further assistance on this topic as I already did it a couple of times without any problem.

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Yeah I learned that exFat wouldn’t work when I tried to boot the new computer on it.

I ended up just creating a Windows partition on my Mac using bootcamp and booting into that, creating the disk drive in Windows because every other method I tried failed including multiple apps designed specifically for this purpose.

I’ll recommend just buying a USB with a Windows ISO already on it to anyone who asks from now on haha. Way less hassle.

0 Votes 0 ·

UuByte would be great except in May 2022 the free trial doesn't appear to work at all. I've found several search results where people have the same issue

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I managed to create several bootable Windows 10 USBs on Mac (Mojave, Catalina and Big Sur) in recent years. Here are my thoughts.

If you are using a newer Windows 10 ISO (after version 201809), then UUByte ISO Editor is the best app for creating a bootable USB on Mac. It automatically splits the large ISO file into small parts so the Windows installation files can be sit on a FAT32 partition, which is the only working file system supported by Mac for Windows install. Also, this app works on latest Big Sur and M1 Mac as just tested it on a M1 MacBook Air with macOS Big Sur 11.5.

Here is a nice tutorial for creating bootable USB on Mac: https://www.uubyte.com/create-bootable-usb-with-windows-iso.html

If you are using an old version of Windows 10 ISO, then Boot Camp Assistant can help you get this done easily. It is a built-in free app shipped with macOS by default. However, this feature is removed from Boot Camp app on macOS Big Sur. You can still use this app for creating bootable Windows USB on Catalina and Mojave as far as I know.

p.s Balena Etcher does not support Windows OS. You will receive a warning message when trying to import Windows 10 ISO into the program and it recommends other tools instead for burning Windows ISO.

Hey
As long as you have the iso file, you can simply use something like balena etcher to create a bootable usb stick:
https://www.balena.io/etcher/

If you don't have the file, you should be able to download it from here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO

Balena Etcher is pretty self explanatory, download it and you will be promted for an iso file and a usb stick.

Cheers!
Simon

Actually, Balena Etcher seems to never have really supported Windows installations. I just tried with Win10 21H1 and it's an utter failure. Windows needs some special (who's surprised) steps that Balena doesn't run and doesn't seem inclined to do so - there's a GitHub issue about this topic since 2016 with no solution planned, nor intent to: https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/issues/210

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The problem is that on MacOS that format restricts individual files from being larger than 4gb, and the install.wim file in the Windows 10 iso must be more than 4 G.
Etcher doens't seem to be able to process the ISO file larger than 4 GB.

So, I've tried Terminal to create a bootable USB on macOS.

If it's more than 4 GB, you'll need to split the file. Copy all files except install.wim to the USB drive by using the following command prompt.

rsync -avh --progress --exclude=sources/install.wim /Volumes/CCCOMA_X64FRE_EN-US_DV9/ /Volumes/WINDOWS10

Don't forgot to install the Homebrew. Finally enter the command this command to end the process:

wimlib-imagex split /Volumes/CCCOMA_X64FRE_EN-US_DV9/sources/install.wim /Volumes/WIN10/sources/install.swm 4000

PS: This method is a bit difficult and error-prone and is not recommended if you are a novice.

I also tried other alternative tools like SYSGeeker WonderISO, UNetbootin and UUByte ISO Editor, they're really great softwares and each has its own merit.

https://www.sysgeeker.com/how-to-create-windows-10-bootable-usb-on-mac-catalina.html

The highlight of this software is that it can automatically process ISO files larger than 4GB. I highly recommend it.

0 Votes 0 ·

Share the tools and methods I know:
How about the boot camp Assistant? Although it does not work sometimes, as a multi-boot creation utility, it can create a Windows 10 bootable USB on your Mac.
If you are good at CMD, it is possible to use CMD to create Windows 10 bootable USB on a Mac in a virtual machine. But if you are a computer novice or are not know much about CMD, please find another way.
If you have installed Windows iSO files on your Mac, try UNetbottin, plug in the USB on Mac, and launch the Disk Utility option. Open the Windows .iso file in UNetbottin and burn it to the USB flash drive. Generally speaking, the task is OK completed in 15 minutes.
Suppose you are not interested in the above software. I think UUbyte iSO Editor is enough. Just download and install this software on your Mac and run it. Next, you can burn iSO files to USB. The whole process won't take a long time. UUbyte iSO Editor is a good choice for computer novices. And can quickly complete tasks without any technical requirements.

Boot Camp Assistant prompts to remove any extern storage and UUbyte isn't a free utility, it doesn't let you do anything, even if you press "Trial" button

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It does the job well though it is not free. You could spend hours by trying the other alternatives. I learnt from my lesson. Wasted three hours with Terminal app and only 7 minutes with UUByte ISO Editor.

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This is shitty software and require license to work it won't even work in trial mode.

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I have also tried UUbyt ISO Edito tool, It‘s also a pretty good software in the field of creating bootable USB, but I finally selected SYSGGeeker Wonderiso, thank you for your reply.

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Use: UNetbootin on Mac
- Plug in your USB drive into your Mac.
- Open Disk Utility and select your USB drive on the left. Click on the info button and write down the device name.
- Download and install the UNetbootin utility.
- Choose the "Diskimage" button and then click on the "…" button to select the iso file that you have downloaded.
- Set the Type as USB Drive and select the device name of your USB drive that you have noted down earlier.
- Click OK and wait for the USB to be formatted to a bootable drive.

If error "Not identified developer" - Goto System Preferences -> Security&Privacy
-select the option to access the UNetbootin
Download Link from github:- https://unetbootin.github.io

This did not quite work for me. It was able to make the USB bootable, and the Windows installed process began, but then failed with "Cannot open the required file C:\Sources\install.wim". In the repair mode I was able to see that that file does exist, so I'm not sure what the problem was - possibly not related to UNetbootin.

0 Votes 0 ·

I've just decided the best way to do this is to burn it to a DVD. Who would have known that everything old would become new again.

I did this instead:

1. Installed VirtualBox on the macOS
   

2. Created a Windows 10 virtual machine with the VirtualBox
   

3. Installed Ventoy, Rufus, or even the Microsoft's official Media Creation Tool on the Windows 10 VM
   

4. Mounted the USB disk from macOS to the Windows 10 VM (ps: for this to work you will need to install the VirtualBox Extension Pack before)
   

5. And then did everything as usual... using Ventoy or your proffered tool to create the bootable Windows USB disk.

   
   

Thank you for your reply, installing a virtual machine is also a way to create windows bootable USB, but I personally don't like this because installing a virtual machine is very troublesome and also takes up a lot of space.

0 Votes 0 ·

I've been trying to do this for a few days... and finally succeeded! To try to prevent people hitting the same issues I had, I've put together a detailed step-by-step guide on how I achieved to create on Mac a bootable USB Windows installer that actually worked.

If you are having issues with the guides out there, have a look at this one and, hopefully, it'll save you a few hours of frustration and despair:

Create a bootable Windows USB on Mac, that actually works

I hope it helps!

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