Windows Bootable USB stick

Nov 3, 2014

I had a hard time creating a bootable USB stick of Windows 8.1 as I do not own a computer with Windows on it and unetbootin does not work anymore with Windows 8.1. So here is the procedure:

First of all, you must have an iso file of Windows 8/8.1 on your hard drive and a USB stick of at least 5GB.

Mount the iso:

 sudo mount -t udf -o loop,ro,unhide /path/to/file.iso /mnt

Run fdisk with the name of the USB stick:
```
 sudo fdisk /dev/sdc
```
Delete all existing partition with d, which deletes one partition at a time, and create a new one using n.
The new partition must have a size of at least 5GB. Mark it bootable and set its type to 7 (HPFS/NTFS/ExFat).
Write changes and exit fdisk.
Create a FAT-32 file system in the new partition:
```
 sudo mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdc1
```
Mount this partition in a previously created folder:
```
 sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /media/usbstick
```
Copy all the files from the ISO on the USB stick:
```
 sudo cp -r /mnt/* /media/usbstick
```
Synchronize the file systems:
```
 sudo sync
```

Unmount both the ISO and the USB stick:

sudo umount /media/usbstick
sudo umount /mnt