I don't understand why Microsoft are so awkward when it comes to allowing people to install Windows from ISO. First they don't make the ISO's available, then when they do you have to jump through hoops to get it to work (for example with Windows 8 having to make changes to the registry then run slmgr /rearm to activate it or on 8.1 having to install with a generic key first as it won't accept your proper 8.1 serial number).
So it seems they recently realised that some people have multiple machines and they want to do clean installs of Windows on them without downloading the whole lot every single time they decide to wipe and start again. But instead of just making ISO's available and supplying a tool to burn the ISO to USB or DVD, they decided to use a Installation Media 'Web app' instead. (Windows 7 USB tool is still available, but requires .net Framework 2.0, which isn't installed by default on Win 8).
The first problem with the web app is that it operates from a Temp folder and everytime it's opened it has a different path (For example %USERPROFILE%\appdata\local\temp\6585d8d2-2062-4f9c-969e-08k8bb550rst\mediacreationtoolexpanded\mediacreationtool.exe). That means for those using a whitelist firewall it will be automatically blocked and you can't just create an outbound rule for the executable because when you open the tool again, the path is different.
But, the above isn't the main problem as it's possible to work around it. The biggest problem is how un-user friendly it is when it fails to write to the media. When I tried using it, it said there was an error writing to USB stick, but I have no idea why. And you can't just retry, you have to restart from the very beginning and download the whole lot again!
So instead of re-downloading it again and facing the possibility of experiencing the same problem, I just downloaded the raw ISO and used 'Rufus' to write it to a USB stick instead. Rufus was able to create the ISO perfectly fine, so I don't know what the problem was with the proper windows tool. Pretty poor that the best solution is to use a third party tool rather than a tool from Microsoft.
/r
So it seems they recently realised that some people have multiple machines and they want to do clean installs of Windows on them without downloading the whole lot every single time they decide to wipe and start again. But instead of just making ISO's available and supplying a tool to burn the ISO to USB or DVD, they decided to use a Installation Media 'Web app' instead. (Windows 7 USB tool is still available, but requires .net Framework 2.0, which isn't installed by default on Win 8).
The first problem with the web app is that it operates from a Temp folder and everytime it's opened it has a different path (For example %USERPROFILE%\appdata\local\temp\6585d8d2-2062-4f9c-969e-08k8bb550rst\mediacreationtoolexpanded\mediacreationtool.exe). That means for those using a whitelist firewall it will be automatically blocked and you can't just create an outbound rule for the executable because when you open the tool again, the path is different.
But, the above isn't the main problem as it's possible to work around it. The biggest problem is how un-user friendly it is when it fails to write to the media. When I tried using it, it said there was an error writing to USB stick, but I have no idea why. And you can't just retry, you have to restart from the very beginning and download the whole lot again!
So instead of re-downloading it again and facing the possibility of experiencing the same problem, I just downloaded the raw ISO and used 'Rufus' to write it to a USB stick instead. Rufus was able to create the ISO perfectly fine, so I don't know what the problem was with the proper windows tool. Pretty poor that the best solution is to use a third party tool rather than a tool from Microsoft.
/r
My Computer
System One
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- OS
- Win 8 64-bit