r/chromeos • u/QuarantineNudist Device | Channel Version • 1d ago

Troubleshooting Creating a bootable Windows 11 USB stick?

I tried the Chromebook Recovery Utility app to make a bootable drive from an official Microsoft Windows ISO image, and it boots, but it immediately shows the message "Please select the driver you want to install to make your hardware discoverable." A quick serach indicated that another user who encountered the same issue allegedly found that the USB stick wasn't partitioned correctly, and fixing the formatting resolved the issue.

Have other ChromeOS users had any luck creating a workable Windows install bootable USB stick on ChromeOS, or did they similarly get stuck?

I could also try Crostini on ChromeOS, or a separate MacBook but no separate Windows box for this task. BalenaEtcher which is a popular cross-platform free software has an open bug in GitHub from 2016 to make it work for Windows ISOs.

Edit: this worked, using Disk Utility and brew on Mac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06KAT0TBcpc

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u/oldschool-51 1d ago

Yes I had that problem. Maybe caused by a guardian angel warning you about Window. I solved it my fully erasing the stick first.

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u/dutchie_001 1d ago

Try woeusb in your Linux environment on your chromebook. It worked for windows 7, don't know about win 10 or 11

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u/QuarantineNudist Device | Channel Version 1d ago

apt install didn't work and I found some posts mentioning the project got abandoned - ended up using Mac and the tip outlined here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06KAT0TBcpc Surprisingly tedious.

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u/Eleison23 Acer 516GE CBG516-1H | Stable 1d ago

No, you probably can't do that. You wouldn't be able to do it on a smartphone or anything. Use a Windows machine.

Microsoft and Google are competitors, so you can expect less compatibility and more conflict as they grow apart. Definitely in terms of the OS. But moreover, Chromebook is not really a "general purpose programmable system" computer. It runs PWA and the Linux, Android subsystems, but at a base level, Chromebook is designed for a specific user experience as a netbook, connecting to cloud apps, not for tinkering with stuff locally as you describe.

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u/QuarantineNudist Device | Channel Version 1d ago

Not sure what the smartphone reference was about but I hear you. I'm not a fan of Windows either, but need it to run some software that the hospital gave me to look at MRI scans.

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u/rebelde616 1d ago

Could you install Ventoy on a USB thumb drive in the Linux environment and just put Windows in it? Is that possible?