How to Run Windows From a USB Drive (Win 10 or 11)

Yes, it's possible, here's how!
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Rufus: rufus.ie/
Windows 11 ISO: www.microsoft.com/software-do...
Windows 10 ISO: www.microsoft.com/en-us/softw...
▼ Time Stamps: ▼
0:00 - Intro & Requirements
0:44 - Downloading Rufus
1:02 - Obtaining Windows 11 ISO
1:43 - Obtaining Windows 10 ISO
2:18 - Burning the Bootable USB
4:50 - Booting Up the USB (Disabling Secure Boot)
6:26 - Booting Into Windows
7:30 - Limitations of Windows To Go
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[@GeekIWG]

TIP: Change your user agent to appear to be something other than Windows, such as Linux, then Microsoft's website will give you the option to download a Windows 10 ISO directly. It's faster than using the media creator tool.

[@ThioJoe]

Hm good to know

[@TBA_5854]

I used to get that link in Android and share to pc and download it on pc

[@JustA.Person]

You don't even need an extension for that, you can just go to inspect element and click the button where you can simulate a phone screen. That changes the user agent and you get direct download links

[@samsg]

Hmm

[@skorpion1298]

@@mickael9 big brain time

[@nogoat]

Here's a piece of advice. DO NOT DO THIS ON USB 2.0 It took a literal day to create it for me on USB 2.0

[@ThioJoe]

Yep i’d believe it

[@Humziish]

I tryed years ago.. USB 2.0 is much too slow.

[@ryanrunangnaff2868]

yeah USB 2.0 is very slow but it still works. Depends on what you use it for I guess. I am using my WTG thumb drive for Chia XCH cold wallet.

[@PAKTC]

patience is a virtue with USB 2.0

[@Fafr]

If only this video was released before I tried using Rufus, now my USB 2.0 is bricked because I stopped the error checking thing

[@prestonlaptops]

One of the best sets of videos I've seen relating to all kinds of computer problems. Makes a change to watch someone who actually seems to know what they are talking about.

[@snarkykat]

This is awesome! I've been looking for something like this for a long time! Thanks Joe!

[@lightningsam8345]

It’s remarkable how a channel has transformed from posting SPAM videos for entertainment to super cybersecurity and useful videos! Great job, ThioJoe!

[@bassam_salim]

It took me a while to trust him

[@IbbiAhmed]

everytime i get a recommendation of his vid, this is exactly what goes through my mind

[@Qwerty-uiop]

First impressions are last impressions 😔

[@joen4287]

@@bassam_salim lmaoooo I remember watching his video and trying to download ram and also trying to increase my internet speed 🤣

[@thedrbat9572]

@@bassam_salim i still never use his videos for a tutorial on something, ik he probably doesnt fool people anymore but hes caused damages to enough people for me not to trust him at all. And if your wondering which video i fell for, it was the "how to make your phone charge faster"

[@randydrew66]

Perfect video, been working on this all day when my c drive got corrupted! Thank you for showing the entire setup!

[@yyperi]

This is very useful for testing memory overclocks. It's easy to corrupt your OS install if the RAM isn't 100% stable.

[@y3eMAN]

Thanks a ton for this video! Needed to recover photos from my computer that wasn't booting, and this method helped me access my files on drive that wasn't booting windows.

[@MooneLightEntertainment]

*Can you believe that I entered a search query for this exact topic with the name Thiojoe a couple of hours earlier? I even included Rufus in the search query* Feels like providence!

[@Veeriah.Karupaiah]

ThioJoe is a literal livesaver. Thank you. I lost my boot device for Windows 11 yesterday and this helped me.

[@bramovsk]

Hey man thanks a lot. I was really overwheld and confused but now it all makes sense. Thank you.

[@prowler1567]

This could have possible useful purposes of which I haven't thought of yet. Thanks Joe.

[@pyp2205]

Awesome! I've been wanting to do this for a while.

[@michaelmudendah8854]

You're my favorite tech teacher because your tutorials are easy to follow. Michael from Zambia

[@blessingsjoelssen2499]

You're a freakin hero Bru! I've had difficulties installing Windows 10 to an 80s windows Xp machine (floppy disk time)Love from South Africa!

[@khalidyt4173]

Life saver bro fr . Some programs and games doesn’t work correctly or doesn’t work at all in my windows 11 bc my pc config is not supported (valorant for example needs TPM 2.0 in windows 11 or it doesn’t start ). I watched your video and put windows 10 on usb so i can run the programs that doesn’t work on my windows 11

[@TheSamdroidOnline]

Great video. Just yesterday I was wondering how to do this. Great timing. 😀

[@nielsdegroot9138]

From the Rufus FAQ: You should no longer have to disable Secure Boot if you use Rufus 3.17 or later, as the UEFI:NTFS bootloaders being used by these versions are Secure Boot signed.

[@NotJacobX]

I still can't see the USB on my boot menu, though... and i use the latest Rufus 3.21

[@user-nx7sj1pi2c]

​@@NotJacobXTry Delyte and one more install program... or chek ... in rufs setup

[@martinbilis8875]

Hey, I Love your Videos! Keep up the Good Work!

[@yacinebenaissa9838]

Tumbs up for the video. I was a little bit scepticle since i come form the IT prank era of theo joe but this was actually helpful. Thank you

[@edison700]

Thanks for this. This was way easier than the way i did this. I did this by using a spare computer and empty sata hdd. Running the first part of the installation where you select the drive you want to install and it starts copying the windows image to the drive. Once I got the your computer will restart in 10 seconds I turned off the computer, removed the drive and cloned it to a USB drive, and then booted off the usb and finished the setup. edit: I guess the way i did it, windows treated it like a normal installation and windows would feature update just fine

[@anon_y_mousse]

This is awesome. I had a friend a long time back who made a live CD for Win98 and I've always wondered how he did it. Looks like Microsoft may finally be embracing the live CD and everyone can do it now. Though, I'd still like to make a proper Win98 live CD. If anyone is wondering why, it's because I've got a lot of old computers that wouldn't be capable of running anything more recent.

[@writerconsidered]

Don't you need a floppy file to install before you can install 98? I know that's how it was back in the day.

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@writerconsidered It just needs to be able to boot itself. I have a Win98 install disc that can boot, and it goes into a dos prompt allowing you to type `setup`, but I'd want it to run Windows directly instead of just providing the setup tool. I also have a really old copy of Knoppix, and that always worked for me, but Linux is just super easy anyway. It'd be the cool factor more than anything.

[@PierreKerbage]

Excellent! Thank you for the video and the content!

[@The-X-Target]

Excellent content as always.

[@aaronaustrie]

Great vid man. I had to do that for a CS class I had awhile back so I consider this to be easy to do

[@truongkhoaui]

This is exactly what I want when I don't have any operating system on my machine. Thank you Joe.

[@MikeODonnell]

You are my hero for all the stuff i know i should be able to do but cant remember exactly how to do it :) Making a NVME bootable external drive now.

[@Mohammedhk876]

Nice Keep It Up I Already Know This But For The Begginers It's Really Good

[@tonydanza6406]

Dude ! You are the Man ! I was looking for something like this you explain it very easy ! thank you !

[@Kenfin7]

The samsung usb thumb drive you showed looked really cool!

[@herewegoagain113]

I have rufus and I have windows iso, but I was unable to just do it until I saw this video where you clicked on the downward arrow menu and you choose ''Windows to Go". That does it. Thank you.

[@mahdimossavi8868]

Hey so which one should I click? Windows to go or standard windows installation?

[@faugetentertain]

@@mahdimossavi8868 windows to go

[@alternatedenz]

@@mahdimossavi8868 Bro what do you think why is it called windows to go

[@ezmoney1985]

This video is the best i was tryna do this process for 2days and i was doing it wrong pc wudent troubleshoot or reset.. i cudnt get pass auto pc repair and diagnosis but after watching this it reallly worked

[@UNICORNSF3ProgameplayProRACER]

Great video, thanks for sharing!

[@estuardoruedas]

Thanks for information! I will be update my laptop 💻 windows 10 to windows 11 soon.

[@theitacademy3145]

Love your channel. Thanks for sharing.

[@michaelstaton1999]

I think secure boot might have been what i was missing thanks Joe.

[@sirborkyes]

HOLY CRAP, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! YOU JUST SAVED SO MANY FILES THAT WERE IMPORTANT TO ME, YOU'RE A LIFE SAVER!!!!

[@MaskedTitan999]

Is this USB Persistent ? will everything be saved when i run the windows again from the usb ? Also Is it necessary to Disable Secure Boot ?

[@realandroidgamingreviews]

I have wanted to do this for a long time, finnaly

[@semiblade]

This is actually pretty useful, for example: if you wanna install a new/different os to your main hard drive, you should set this up in case you need some quick access to Windows for a certain program/programs.

[@animegamer3336]

HBCD PE , would be better for that purpose TBH

[@luhgarlicbread]

@@animegamer3336 Not for playing Windows games but, at that point you might as well dual boot

[@thomashauri4897]

Life saver. Thanks heaps 😊

[@mattelder1971]

Rufus has a feature built in to download the Windows ISO. It does this directly from the Microsoft servers, so it would save you a step and you still end up with the same file.

[@emronglass]

how do we bump this comment ^^^ to the top??

[@dan2800]

I've used to run windows 10 from external SSD (made with cracked version of wintogo) in school because the boot priority had main priority to boot from external it was fun

[@vwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvw9]

Yo I'm early! Glad I have all notifications on. Also, nice. Thanks for the educational video!

[@madd5]

Your videos are always useful.

[@GamingDog20]

Hi Joe, I remember years ago when I was a bit inexperienced with computers. I remember trying to reinstall windows but the"copying files" would always stop at certain percentage and after a bit of time it would error me all the time. Hours and hours of research what the problem could be, doing rufus over again, downloading other iso, nothing helped. In the end, bought a new usb and that was it, apparently the old usb was faulty 🙂

[@Techknowverse]

you should have used ez2boot.

[@garavonhoiwkenzoiber]

it was probably a fake usb, like a 4 gig that claimed to be an 8 gig

[@jtiservice6618]

Very good presentation man! Thank you! Brazilian Team

[@rizalinaperalta3619]

Thank man! very helpful video.

[@dalebock3226]

Great presentation, thank you.

[@Graham6410]

It's a pretty handy thing to have, not sure why Microsoft do not include it in standard versions of Windows.

[@E_2the_J]

If your using BIOS you need to change the partition scheme to 'MBR' and the target system to 'BIOS or UEFI'

[@derpderpinson8208]

thanks, i was just going after what this moron said in the video and wasted like 1.5 hours

[@nikil213]

How can i do that

[@E_2the_J]

@@nikil213 in the video at 3:17 you can see the partition scheme is set to 'GPT' by default. just click on that and in the menu change it to 'MBR'. the target system right next to it should be set to 'BIOS or UEFI' instead of 'UEFI (non CSM)'

[@curzzcurlex6960]

Thanks for the tips bro

[@maritoguionyo]

1:48 you can download iso by using developer options and doing the tablet view thing

[@o_wenn]

Thanks dude really helped

[@LeeVoolHM]

i have been messaging an ai for 3 days trying to find out how to do this, thank you theo

[@AlbertoFeinstein]

I look forward to doing it

[@RexMan04]

I wish this video was released 1 day earlier. I just did this after trying for an hour in order to get the files off of my old laptop that wasn't encrypted.

[@TrendFusionNetwork]

Great tutorial 👍

[@prabhashgupta9582]

Very informative👍

[@jeuxfr833]

I've known the method for a long time I love this method it's been a Windows

[@AsifAAli]

Thanks. I needed it to use my potato HP Mini110-1000 netbook. Just want to use it for configuring network. It came with a 32GB SSD back when SSD was fresh and new and costed more than the laptop itself. I have Windows 10 Pro education on it, and it performed fine. A Windows-To-Go on a Crucial BX500 120GB SSD with a Micron SATA-to-USB adapter would be great. 🤤🤤

[@Rufinoman]

I'm going to try this on a customer's HP Stream where the internal eMMC drive has failed and cannot be replaced. Either a pen drive or and SD card. Great video, thanks.

[@makeiroseborough5967]

Worked , thanks a lot!

[@goodman8731]

Thank you so much!

[@TRIPPLE_TECH]

Thanks for the video. Then I had just 2 clarification questions: 1. You talked of the limitations of choosing windows 10 pro version that it cannot do upgrades automatically,,, so which option in windows version should I choose so that i could be getting the automatic upgrades? 2. Can I install windows 10/11 x64bit on a x32 bit OS?

[@paulwarner5395]

Thanx . I've been using this to test Win 11 on a 10 year oild PC. Only had to redo it once when Outlook 365 trashed it'sself and couldn't be repaired.

[@themusesquad8554]

U should do secure boot / uefi vs BIOS boot and such explaining basic stuff like that and what they change and do for basic users.

[@RageTasticc]

If you are downloading windows 10, you can do CTRL+Shift+i and hit the button that looks like a tablet and phone. Then refresh the page and then close the dev tools. This will enable direct download because it thinks you’re on a different on a device.

[@emronglass]

@ThioJoe Can we somehow pin these comments to the top?!

[@gilbrener8395]

Thanks! I tried to make a USB and it didn’t work so you can just imagine my happiness when it worked!

[@cybersamiches4028]

Awesome tut!

[@rangerpeters8794]

You are really awesome bro!

[@wisdombright9821]

I have a Surface Pro 6 with a dead SSD, booting from USB is the only way to use it again so thank you for making this as easy as possible. I Will buy a 2230 M.2 ssd for portability and speed instead of using a hard drive.

[@rafj75]

Just for everyone to know , it took me 12hours to make that bootable usb with rufus not 5 minute or an hour.. if you see it as if it froze just leave it and come back every hour to check on it's progress.. HANG IN THERE. 😄

[@rejyjosephroc1244]

Very Helpfully i loce your channel bro

[@nadeemurrehman2577]

Thanks sir you help me a lot.

[@felixhacker6251]

I Really Love Your Videos Man!! Thanks So Much That Helped Me!! One Question "How Do I Fix 'GPT Style' Hard Disks?"

[@CNWPlayer]

You can also use Balena Etcher.

[@o_o6869]

quite good progress

[@RameshSeelochan]

I’ve had luck cloning an existing windows install to a usb external drive then being able to select that external drive in the bios boot menu. Works great with an ssd plugged into atleast a usb 3.0 or higher port. This install is interesting. Might give it a try.

[@marke9036]

*I did the same thing did not work does not know why do you know why? (I even changed the putting order to booting from the USB first, it will just go to booting from the C drive as usual; after I disable C drive it will just give me blue screen and say internal drive was not found)*

[@RameshSeelochan]

@@marke9036 might need to check your BIOS. if your system is set to UEFI and the external drive was pulled from a system that was set up in Legacy mode it might not work. I believe this applies to vice versa. I've had similar issues and a combination of boot settings and switching from RAID to AHCI worked

[@cholsreammos]

I clones my internal drive to an external and booting it on the exact same computer and it gave the "inaccessible boot drive" when i tried with bot macrium and clonezilla so im not sure whats going on The leading thing people are saying is you cant boot regular windows from a usb drive . . . But here hes using regular windows? Idk its annoying af

[@RameshSeelochan]

@@cholsreammos i've had this issue if I clone to an NVME drive and try to boot from that drive is the OS doesn't have a RAID driver. how are you cloning? from within windows or using a 3rd party tool preboot?

[@cholsreammos]

@@RameshSeelochan im also cloning to an nvme I tried using macrium reflect and clonezilla

[@DigitalHandle]

You should've uploaded last year when i still had that old working laptop! Now i can't even use my current one (my current one does not have a hard drive so i used a usb instead), but hey, this might cone in handy if i have a working laptop near me

[@CesareVesdani]

Please make a video tutorial on how set any USB flash drive read-only like a CD-ROM disk.

[@user-yg5ss1pi6n]

You got me! thsanks for your haelp, I will subscribe and like and I will set up my T460s

[@michaelphilo6157]

Great vid, will this work on just a monitor like the Nexdock?

[@eliasailenei1186]

Thanks Thio!

[@GanjaGuerillas]

So glad that I found your video. My windows 11 crashed and went into a boot loop and and all the available options to repair it wouldn't work other than to reformat back to windows10 but I had lots of data that needed recovered. Also never again will I do an upgrade to windows11👎

[@Khitthia]

Excelent video thanks. Just didn't get the last part of disabling secure boot... Is that made in the PC where you install the windows?

[@Mocoso7]

You can also use Aomei Partition Assistant to make WinToGo !

[@naxel37]

The most amazing thing about this video is the fact that you have an LG computer!!!

[@noonenoesbutme]

About to get a very powerful laptop from work, but for obvious reasons I'm not allowed install games on it. So I plan on using one of these to play Steam when I'm away from my gaming Desktop. Basically turn my work PC into my personal computer and mobile gaming station with a USB drive :)

[@thebigtommy1338]

It’s okay to feel that why. I felt like that sowhat at the beginning. Just use the love you have for making soft to overpower that feeling

[@user-xm3el3sq9j]

Thank You!

[@ford1546]

with rufus usb installer you can easily turn off TPM. and other things in a simple way in win11 install so you can install win11 on older machines.

[@parkerlreed]

You can also create a Virtualbox image that points to a real storage device and install that way :) So the normal Windows installer just thinks it's any ole SSD and installs regularly.

[@kenzie_abqarys]

Hi Thio, in 1:02 I notice that your downloads are at the top, how did you enable that in chrome?

[@33TVWVL]

OMG thanks for the tutorial!! Yesterday my laptop immediately went to BIOS after turning it on, I was completely clueless and thought it was damaged for good. Then tried to research all these stuffs. Learn a lot from both the video and the comments (especially the one tip about changing the user agent)! One thing though, I only reached the downloading step, then put both Rufus and ISO in my USB. Couldn't proceed with the steps shown in the tutorial (ran rufus, did as shown but couldn't hit the *Start* button). I kinda gave up and just inserted the USB in the laptop and turned it on and it just started up like normal??? Still don't know what went wrong with it, so if anyone has any idea, I'd highly appreciate some new techy knowledge 😭🙏 (Before this, my laptop screen had completely turned black after start-up. Watched another video about plugging out the battery, discharging it,etc. Screen turned on but stayed in BIOS. I disabled both *Security Boot* and *Fast Boot* , then enabled *Launch CSM* . Nothing happened until i used the USB (with both Rufus and ISO newly downloaded, untouched). My laptop works just fine now, no data loss whatsoever. It felt like a fever dream 😭🙏

[@khanscombe619]

Is it stable enough to boot various motherboards of different chipsets for testing & OC test? If crashed, easy to recover? Or use as a SandBox to test a game or app?

[@LP0818]

in the windows 10 iso microsoft website, you can change the website sys, so like a tablet, refhes the page, then you get the iso image, it might be harder

[@andrejbartulin]

I would like Rufus can be compatible with macOS and GNU/Linux

[@ShiroiAkumaSama]

This was very helpful, I needed a windows-to-go because the user account is completely broken and I was not able to rescue it, when I tried to repair it it looks in but it only has an mouse. No taskbar or anything hopefully with this I can repair it. Not even Safe Mode on said PC doesn't work, because it always logged into the damaged user account. And for some weird reason I have no rescue options on said PC either I once click recover PC from an older state or something and since then like all the other options are gone and it says only cancel. And it is stuck with that.

[@yayi3434]

thanks

[@merzlopez]

Thanks Sir TheoJoe,,, i found how to update windows 10 on your link.🙂