Rufus allows you to select the partition scheme and the target system type. Considering that the tool only has to format a flash drive and copy some files to it, I don’t understand why Microsoft requires the Windows 7 USB tool to be installed. In addition, it offers a few features that the IT pro will like.įirst of all, it is a portable application and therefore needs no installation. Thus far, it mastered every flash drive I tried. I think Microsoft should no longer sell Windows on DVDs and instead offer USB setup sticks and bare metal cloud installations.Īnyway, I played with the free Rufus alternative to the Windows 7 USB tool, and it appears to be more reliable. People expect that they can just use a product when they paid for it without the need to fiddle around with diskpart. 😉 I believe forcing end users to download an unreliable tool to create install media is an anachronism.

So you see what a Microsoft fan boy I am. I suppose the majority of customers would just have returned the Windows 8 DVD and bought an iPa(i)d or Android tablet instead.

They didn’t know how to do that and I ended up doing it myself in the shop. Since the Windows 8 package only came with a DVD and I didn’t bring a DVD drive, I had to go back to the shop and ask them to create a USB boot stick for me. It appears that, depending on the country, the license key and the Windows 8 setup have to fit together. When I tried to install the OS with my USB stick, the setup complained that the license key doesn’t work. I recently bought Windows 8 in the Philippines. I’d like to take this opportunity to add one more annoyance that might be a bit off topic because I am supposed to review Rufus here. If you run into problems even before you can create the installation media, then then you are likely somewhat prejudiced against a new operating system that was made for tablet PCs and Ultrabooks for which a setup DVD is relatively useless. Considering that more and more PCs no longer feature DVD drives, this could be a major reason why Windows 8 user satisfaction is not always as high as Microsoft hopes.

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