• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

When you need a Windows install...

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.
ihrsetrdr

ihrsetrdr

Señor Senior Member
​
Joined
May 17, 2005
Location
High Desert, Calif.
When you are an all Linux shop but find yourself in the position of needing a Windows install for specific purpose, it can be daunting, as the game has become more complex. I run all Arcolinux desktops but a particular tool (Ventoy)for creating bootable USB Windows installers was just not successfully ebuilding , via Pamac(pacman). However, I read that Ventoy was readily available in Ubuntu, and I'd been looking for a reason to try out the latest release...so this was the reason. Shrank a partition for the Ubuntu 23.04 install, and made it happen.

Ventoy succeeded were other methods fail. I now have Windows 10 and a Windows 11 USB installers that work. With all that out of the way I can take advantage of several AI video editing apps that (hopefully) will be more functional than currently available open source provide.

​

 
Imagine how awesome it will be when you grab a 64gb or greater USB stick and put all the OS on it :)

I find myself in need of a Windows install from time to time for oddball reasons like updating the bios on an old-ish laptop or some other such nonsense that has a Windows lock on the program. I am really drawing a blank for examples atm but it happens from time to time (Odin for Samsung phones as well, which does have Heimdall in Linux but Odin seems to work better). The best I have been able to come up with for a liveiso experience is throwing Hirens onto my Ventoy stick or even putting an entire Windows install onto an nvme usb3 adapter. Between those 2 options and VMs I can do most of what I need, but since it seems like you also get into this pickle... any swiss army knives or tricks that I might not have heard of?

Edit: Geeze I didn't look at the date of the OP till I posted. Sorry for the resurrection of the old thread
 
knoober said:
Imagine how awesome it will be when you grab a 64gb or greater USB stick and put all the OS on it :)

I find myself in need of a Windows install from time to time for oddball reasons like updating the bios on an old-ish laptop or some other such nonsense that has a Windows lock on the program. I am really drawing a blank for examples atm but it happens from time to time (Odin for Samsung phones as well, which does have Heimdall in Linux but Odin seems to work better). The best I have been able to come up with for a liveiso experience is throwing Hirens onto my Ventoy stick or even putting an entire Windows install onto an nvme usb3 adapter. Between those 2 options and VMs I can do most of what I need, but since it seems like you also get into this pickle... any swiss army knives or tricks that I might not have heard of?

Edit: Geeze I didn't look at the date of the OP till I posted. Sorry for the resurrection of the old thread
Click to expand...
No problem actually, as improvements in OS USB installation media is an ongoing topic of interest. On just one 32 GB stick created with Ventoy I have:
debian-live-12.5.0-amd64-mate.iso
Endeavouros-Galileo-11-2023.iso
Fedora-MATE_Compiz-Live-x86_64-39-1.5.iso
gparted-live-1.6.0-1-amd64.iso
manjaro-mate-23.0.1-230921-linux65.iso
rescuezilla-2.4.2-64bit.jammy.iso
super_grub2_disk_hybrid_2.04s1.iso
tails-amd64-6.0.img
ubuntu-mate-22.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso
...with 5GB still available. I have another 32GB stick with Win10 and Win11 .ISOs...too bad MS doesn't have a "live" image available, would be quite handy.
 
Thats about what my stick looks like. I keep 2 or 3 desktop distros, Hiren's Boot, DBAN, Win10 &11, and FreeDOS. If I need to work with partitions I will use gparted/fdisk from the desktop distro, as well as fixing grub issues but that supergrub2 looks like it might be handy. I kind of want to keep clonezilla on there as well but I cant decide if its wasted space. I have been searching for a long time for a usable windows live iso with no luck. The PE environments are often missing drivers or other misc files that are needs to run whatever little windows thing I am trying to do. I will just keep my fingers crossed that windows devs will some day see the light :)
 
knoober said:
Thats about what my stick looks like. I keep 2 or 3 desktop distros, Hiren's Boot, DBAN, Win10 &11, and FreeDOS. If I need to work with partitions I will use gparted/fdisk from the desktop distro, as well as fixing grub issues but that supergrub2 looks like it might be handy. I kind of want to keep clonezilla on there as well but I cant decide if its wasted space. I have been searching for a long time for a usable windows live iso with no luck. The PE environments are often missing drivers or other misc files that are needs to run whatever little windows thing I am trying to do. I will just keep my fingers crossed that windows devs will some day see the light :)
Click to expand...
After Windows 7 I felt it wise for MS to make a shift to a Unix-like OS as Apple did, in 2001. MS "kind of" wants to join in with the Open Source goodness, but apparently only if they can call the shots. I cringed at the news that Microsoft had bought GitHub, but they survived and as a stock has increased in value considerably. :shrug:
 
ihrsetrdr said:
After Windows 7 I felt it wise for MS to make a shift to a Unix-like OS as Apple did, in 2001. MS "kind of" wants to join in with the Open Source goodness, but apparently only if they can call the shots. I cringed at the news that Microsoft had bought GitHub, but they survived and as a stock has increased in value considerably. :shrug:
Click to expand...
Not trying to muck up the thread or anything, but I had a comment about this:
When I saw Win10, one of my first thoughts was that MS was trying to emulate the look and feel of KDE and this has only been strengthened by the look and feel of Win11. Perhaps this is wishful thinking but I think that if they can see the better UI/UX, then maybe they will come around with other areas as well (far into the future that is). I also thought MS were going to kill github, but it has been a non issue from my perspective. None of the projects I follow have boycotted or move to competitors, and that tells me that MS must not have made too many waves.
 
ihrsetrdr said:
When you are an all Linux shop but find yourself in the position of needing a Windows install for specific purpose, it can be daunting, as the game has become more complex. I run all Arcolinux desktops but a particular tool (Ventoy)for creating bootable USB Windows installers was just not successfully ebuilding , via Pamac(pacman). However, I read that Ventoy was readily available in Ubuntu, and I'd been looking for a reason to try out the latest release...so this was the reason. Shrank a partition for the Ubuntu 23.04 install, and made it happen.

Ventoy succeeded were other methods fail. I now have Windows 10 and a Windows 11 USB installers that work. With all that out of the way I can take advantage of several AI video editing apps that (hopefully) will be more functional than currently available open source provide.

​

Click to expand...
Thats great but is the PC running Linx with a windows feel or something else.
 
rainless said:
What kind of video work do you do?
Click to expand...
I was hoping to sharpen up some of the videos that we live streamed to FB and YT. They were shot with a Canon EOS M50 that my business partner provided, but they lost clarity when they hit FB and YT, very disappointing. I abandoned the hope of using proprietary video apps, when it became apparent that you had to buy and pay for the app before you could even sample the wares.

Not being a Windows user anyway, I shifted my focus back to Linux photo editing, tried KDenLive and DaVinci Resolve, but got frustrated with the learning curve. I can of course do basic stuff like cropping, using terminal commands. Also, I've gotten some marginal improvements with upscaling using the Terminal.
 
When Installing Windows 11, Microsoft forces you to install a Microsoft Account. There is Hacks to get around this, but since I usually end up selling my builds I don't want to sell one with a hack that may be a problem later.
So I just go ahead and install it with my MS account and when it's up and running, I create a new offline user account with Administrator permissions, and then delete the MS account.
 
Pvee said:
When Installing Windows 11, Microsoft forces you to install a Microsoft Account. There is Hacks to get around this, but since I usually end up selling my builds I don't want to sell one with a hack that may be a problem later.
So I just go ahead and install it with my MS account and when it's up and running, I create a new offline user account with Administrator permissions, and then delete the MS account.
Click to expand...
Ha ha. I do the exact same thing. It's such a PITA. I wish MS would just stop it.
 
Brief aside....

Pvee said:
When Installing Windows 11, Microsoft forces you to install a Microsoft Account. There is Hacks to get around this, but since I usually end up selling my builds I don't want to sell one with a hack that may be a problem later.
Click to expand...
I don't think it's a 'hack' per say...offline accounts...

...I don't play those games you guys are... at least not for my review systems. My home system is MS account :chair: .

But the others, I install it FIRST as offline and move on. Feels like that's easier than going through it all and creating an offline account and deleting it? Just one step. Boom. I also don't think it's a problem selling a complete system with an offline account. That said......I wouldn't sell a system with an OS, period. Make them get their own.
 
I don't think we can do "off-line" anymore, can we? The installer forces the MS logon.
 
I mean, you can't mindlessly click through it, lol...but I wouldn't call it as big as of PITA as getting many Linux distros stood up. :p
 
When you're deeply embedded in a Linux environment but need Windows for a specific task, it can feel like stepping into unfamiliar territory. Your experience highlights the challenges and solutions that come with such a situation. Ventoy is an excellent tool for creating bootable USB installers, and it's great that you were able to get it working with Ubuntu after running into issues on Arcolinux.
It's not uncommon to find that certain tools or software are easier to set up on one Linux distribution over another. Ubuntu's extensive repositories and community support often make it a go-to for tasks that might be more complex on other distros. Your approach of shrinking a partition to temporarily install Ubuntu and resolve the issue was a smart and flexible solution.
Now that you have your Windows 10 and 11 USB installers ready, you can access those AI video editing apps that are not yet fully functional on open-source platforms. This is a perfect example of how a multi-OS setup can be a practical solution when you need the best of both worlds. It’s all about finding the right tools and adapting as needed, which you've done effectively here.
Balancing Linux and Windows can be challenging, but with some creativity and a willingness to experiment, you can achieve the functionality you need without compromising your preferred Linux environment.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

E
Constant 3 note disconnection beep after Windows re-install
Replies
2
Views
81
BugFreak
BugFreak
shadowdr
Windows 11
Replies
2
Views
231
shadowdr
shadowdr
P
If you are a seasoned Windows user, why Linux?
Replies
11
Views
1K
ihrsetrdr
ihrsetrdr
Kenrou
Windows 10 update (KB5053606) causes issues, slowness and even system crashes
Replies
1
Views
192
EarthDog
EarthDog
knoober
I found a tool for making universal install USB (Ventoy)
Replies
2
Views
1K
knoober
knoober
Back