Using the Media Creation Tool to create a bootable USB flash drive?

:emotion-2:

After you have created the bootable flash drive, use the F12 key to boot the drive. Please follow steps below:

1. Power on  the system, wait a few minutes and then insert the window 10 bootable flash drive into a USB port.

2. Power off system.

3. Power the computer on, quickly start tapping the F12 key continuously until you see Preparing one time boot menu.

4. At the boot menu, select the bootable flash drive under UEFI BOOT, see image below:

Dell Inspiron 3543

In the windows setup, select your keyboard language, see image below:

The Repair Your Computer option will provide tools to troubleshoot system You could use the Command Prompt to run sfc/scannow and DISM, see image below:

1. In my experience, the initial formatting of the USB drive is not relevant.  I've never paid close attention to whether the drive was FAT32 or NTFS before using the MS Media Creation Tool, and have never had an issue with either standard BIOS or UEFI systems.  That said my sticks are normally formatted NTFS.  The MCT should re-format and partition the stick appropriately.

Secure Boot will not be an issue (enabled).  If you are unsure about the state of the BIOS, do a factory reset on the BIOS settings and then go through and tweak them to your liking.  Make sure your SATA controller is in the correct/preferred mode (AHCI/RAID) before you install Windows.

I've used Rufus for Windows as well, in which case you'll need to explicitly choose GPT partitioning if you are installing on a UEFI system.  I did not have success using the "MBR for BIOS/UEFI" option on a UEFI system with large drives.

2. Yes, in fact I used my Win10 install stick to fix some corrupted file permissions just last week.

I'd suggest having the latest "F6" driver available on the USB stick during Windows install (most likely Intel Rapid Storage Technology).  I'd also suggest that during the Windows, after loading the Intel RST F6 driver, to delete any existing partitions on your system disk and then install Windows to the empty drive.  That will allow Windows to correctly partition out the disk for you.

Good luck!

Thanks LSUFAN51 and Rotational for your feedback/help...its much appreciated. The only time I have done a clean Windows 10 installation I used Rufus and everything went OK..I was told there would definitely be no problems with secure boot with Rufus ..so that's why I went with that method. I haven't done anything to the BIOS since I bought the laptop..everything is set to factory defaults.

Now the Creators Update is out I want to do a clean installation and I would like to try it with the Microsoft Media Creation Tool which would cut out the need for Rufus if it works.

I'm not sure what you mean by having the latest "F6" drivers on the USB stick during install...is that necessary? I do know that after my previous Win10 clean installation..I went straight to the Dell site to update drivers and an Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver was updated from there. Also I always delete all the existing partitions until the drive is all listed as Unallocated space

The easiest approach is to

* use the media creation tool to, well, create the media (this can be a USB hard disk, too, FWIW); this makes all data available offline on the disk

* while still logged into the existing Windows 10 installation, run setup.exe from that very media

This will give you all options - including a "Keep nothing" installation, which does what it says.

Hi there,

I checked your laptop specs and Windows 10 will have your initial SATA driver already (in old versions of Windows when installing, you would have to hit F6 when prompted for a disk controller driver...Intel still calls it the "F6" driver haha).  So you don't have to worry about that...Just creating the stick with the MCT will be all you need to install successfully.  Install the Intel RST and your other drivers from Dell's website as normal after installing.

Hi Rotational. Thanks for checking out my laptop specs. That's good to know that I wont encounter any problems with SATA driver :-)

Here is how to fix cannot format USB Flash drive in windows 10

First of all open run command box by searching it in windows search box.

Now, write diskpart and hit enter.

Once Diskpart is open. Follow the process given below by writing the commands, one by one.

Select disk 1

clean

create partition primary

active

select partition 1

format fs=fat32

Source:-  merabheja.com/.../

Hi, you will need to have Rufus downloaded to create bootable media. You can follow the guide provided in here appuals.com/.../ and I am sure you will be able to solve your problem.