What to do with the final NTLite .ISO file in order to install Windows

[357mag]

I'm a little unsure. Let's say I have already made my custom NTLite Windows Setup Disk, I've made the .ISO file. Can I just copy that to a USB Flash Drive and then start the Windows installation process like that?

Or do I have to extract the contents of the NTLite .ISO file somehow and then place those contents onto the USB drive?

 

[garlin]

No, you would use Rufus, Ventoy, or another ISO tool to reformat the USB, extract the ISO's file contents to a new volume, and make the drive bootable.

After you have a bootable USB drive, sometimes you can skip the entire ISO process a second time and take the updated boot or install.wim files that NTLite made and directly overwrite the USB drive's copy of the same files. That's because most of the other files, outside of the WIM files, stay the same if you're editing the same Windows release.

 

[357mag]

What if I right-clicked on the .iso file and selected mount. Then that would show me the contents of the .iso file. Then simply copy all the files to the USB drive.

It should be bootable then wouldn't it?

 

[garlin]

No. There’s non-visible boot loader files that these ISO “burning” apps apply. A simple file copy isn’t enough.

If you erase a bootable USB’s filesystem, but don’t reset the disk volume, then a folder copy would work because the hidden files are already there inside the boot volume. But you have to do the ISO conversion process at least once.

 

[357mag]

I will have to watch a few Rufus videos so I know how to use that. I've never used that before.

 

[tistou77]

What if I right-clicked on the .iso file and selected mount. Then that would show me the contents of the .iso file. Then simply copy all the files to the USB drive.

It should be bootable then wouldn't it?

Yes, just extracting the ISO (or mount) and copying the contents to the root of the USB drive (formatted in FAT32) is more than enough
I've never needed third-party software or other to install Windows

Just make sure the USB drive is "active" (checkable with diskpart) so that it is bootable
But most USB drives are "active" by default

What I have on my USB drive

 

[Anonymous Internet User]

I will have to watch a few Rufus videos so I know how to use that. I've never used that before.

Hi,

It's really not that difficult. There is no need for a video. Launch Rufus and you will see this window:



First, select the drive and the image:

Device: select the USB flash drive you want to burn the ISO to. You can use a USB SSD too and it'll be a lot faster. Rufus will wipe the drive anyway, but it needs to be formatted or it will not show in the drop down menu. You probably need a 16GB drive or larger as a customized image might not fit on a 8GB drive.
Boot Selection: Disk or ISO image and click SELECT to select your ISO image.

Then it should look like this with the image selected:



Image option: Standard Windows Installation, this will create a normal installer boot disk.
Partition scheme: GPT
Target system: UEFI
Volume label: whatever you want it to be (within the length allowed)
File system: NTFS
Cluster size: 4096 should be the default and there are normally no reasons to change that

And click START, you will see this window:



UNCHECK all these options if you built an unattended image or there could be unforeseen consequences if you let Rufus alter your custom image at this point. This is a quick way to customize a vanilla Windows ISO for those who can't or don't want to use software like NTLite to build a custom image.

Wait for it to finish. If you're burning to a USB flash drive it can take a long while, over 10 minutes or even more. A USB SSD should take under a minute.

This is it. Boot from the USB drive and run the installer as you would normally do.

Yes, just extracting the ISO (or mount) and copying the contents to the root of the USB drive (formatted in FAT32) is more than enough
I've never needed third-party software or other to install Windows

Just make sure the USB drive is "active" (checkable with diskpart) so that it is bootable
But most USB drives are "active" by default

What I have on my USB drive

Yup. That works too, or at least used to work as I haven't done it in at least a year, but you need to know how to make the drive active and not all USB flash drives are already marked as active or you may be reusing a drive that had something else on it before. Rufus is easier and takes care of proper formatting.

Cheers!

 

[garlin]

Yes, just extracting the ISO (or mount) and copying the contents to the root of the USB drive (formatted in FAT32) is more than enough
I've never needed third-party software or other to install Windows

Just make sure the USB drive is "active" (checkable with diskpart) so that it is bootable
But most USB drives are "active" by default

What I have on my USB drive

Yup. That works too, or at least used to work as I haven't done it in at least a year, but you need to know how to make the drive active and not all USB flash drives are already marked as active or you may be reusing a drive that had something else on it before. Rufus is easier and takes care of proper formatting.

Cheers!

A FAT32 volume may be required on some very old BIOS'es, but limits you to 4 GB file size for the install WIM/ESD. Otherwise you need to convert it to a split WIM.

 

[357mag]

Okay I will give it a go and hope it works out. Thanks.

In the past though, I have made custom NTLite install disks on DVD and I have never used Rufus to make them bootable. They have worked fine.

 

[garlin]

Okay I will give it a go and hope it works out. Thanks.

In the past though, I have made custom NTLite install disks on DVD and I have never used Rufus to make them bootable. They have worked fine.

Physical DVD's have a different data format (ISO-9660) than an USB drive (FAT32 or NTFS). Your BIOS is responsible for trying to read the boot loader off each type of supported drive media.

 

[Anonymous Internet User]

So, out of curiosity, I manually copied the contents of my custom NTLite ISO to a 128GB USB SSD and to a 16GB USB Flash Drive and the SSD worked, booted to the installer, but the Flash Drive was not recognized as a bootable device. If I use Rufus to burn the image to it then it works fine.

No idea. Anyway, I was just curious. I'll still use Rufus as I'm used to it.

 

[tistou77]

Maybe with NTFS, you need a boot loader (Rufus, etc...)
I always format the USB drive in FAT32, there's no point in doing it with NTFS (for ME) and I've never tested this type of soft

And I always make sure the install.wim file is less than 4GB (just deleting the Winsxs backups is usually enough) and it's when I test with unmodified image (juste update)

 

[Anonymous Internet User]

Right, but with FAT32 I'd have to split the install.wim as garlin said above, since mine is always above 7GB, and then format the drive as MBR too. And I've no idea how to do that nor how make my install.wim under 4GB and don't really need to. I don't know/understand enough about this process to remove that much stuff and if I do I end up with a broken install

I haven't used Flash Drives as a boot disks in many years so I forgot all that stuff too, probably last with Windows 7. I experiment a lot, including Linux, and USB SSDs make it so much faster to burn the images repeatedly since I change my mind a lot or just forget things or simply break stuff because I don't know what I'm doing. LOL, I must have re-done my Win 11 24H2 boot disk over 10 times since yesterday. It would be painful to use a Flash Drive.

I also don't have any old-school BIOS systems. Even my oldest 3rd gen Intel has UEFI. So this was an experiment purely just out of curiosity.

 

[garlin]

Not everyone is an experienced NTLite user who already knows which of the components can be safely removed, or they will need to keep multiple editions in the WIM/ESD, or they're sysprepping an image with many post-install additions.

For most users, the convenience of having NTFS makes it more ideal than FAT32. It's like having MBR disks around, they still exist but it shouldn't be your first choice when starting with a clean slate.

 

[tistou77]

Yes, if you want to keep a 7GB install.wim (finally more than 4GB) it's better to format in NTFS and use Rufus or other

 

[Anonymous Internet User]

Not everyone is an experienced NTLite user who already knows which of the components can be safely removed

That would be me. I learn basically by trial and error and by reading these forums. Luckily, I don't want to nor need to remove a lot of stuff and NTLite has lots of warnings. I remove Edge, OneDrive, Copilot, Recall, Xbox stuff and most of the default apps and I make decent use of the settings section to customize my Windows and I add 50+ registry patches but I generally leave the more low level system stuff alone. The results have been quite satisfactory. My last 23H2 desktop built was lean but fully functional, fast and perfectly stable without all the bloat and the way I wanted it.

I enjoy tinkering with NTLite though and tried to go deeper but I eventually hit the limits of my knowledge despite using NTLite for many years.