Create a window installer USB on a Mac

Let’s assume for some inexplicable reasons, we want to install the windows operating system on our machines. For this, first, we need to have a windows installer USB.

If you like to spend money, you can buy an original windows installer USB from here and skip the remaining post.
Otherwise,
You can create an installer USB by yourself by performing these steps on a windows machine.

But wait. The reason that we want to create a windows installer USB in the first place was, that we do not have a machine running windows. Like me, if you only have macOS machines then you can use the below 3 steps to create a windows installer USB.

1- Download windows ISO

You can download windows ISO for free from the Microsoft website.
1.1- Choose the windows edition as follows

1.2- Choose the language as English

1.3- Choose 64 bits version

1.4- Above step will download an ISO file in your download location. Double-click on the ISO file and it will be mounted as a volume.

2- Prepare the USB drive

Now, let’s prepare the USB drive to copy the content from this ISO.

2.1- Insert a USB drive of at least 8 GB capacity in your Mac.

2.2- Open the Disk Utility app on your Mac.

2.3- Click on the USB drive in the left column under External and click on Erase somewhere on the right top.

2.4- I used the Name: WIN-USB but you can choose any. However, The Format:must be MS-DOS (FAT), and Scheme: need to be Master Boot Record

3- Copy the ISO content to the USB

After the step-1 and 2. you should be able to see 2 extra mounted volumes under Locations in your Finder left nav. Same as the last 2 options in the below picture.

Now, all we need to do is copy all the content from the location named CC***_X64*** to the WIN-USB.

But there is one file sources/install.wim in our installer content, which is more than 4 GB. And the File format that we chose to format our USB only supports a maximum file size of 4GB. However, all the other files can be copied to a USB drive as is.

3.1- Select all the folders except the source folder from this CC***_X64** volume as below, and paste it into the WIN-USB volume.

3.2- Create a folder name sources inside the USB drive and copy all the content of the sources folder from ISO into the sources folder in USB except the one file install.wim

To copy sources/install.wim to USB, we need to break the file into pieces smaller than 4GB. For this, we are going to use the wimlib utility. To install wimlib on the Mac, we will use Homebrew.

If you do not have homebrew on your mac my first question is why, But then my next statement is, you can easily install it with the below commands.
/bin/bash -c “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

3.3- Assuming we have homebrew installed on Mac, we can install wimlib by the following command.
[~ %]==> brew install wimlib

3.4- After wimlib is installed we can use the following command to split our install.wim file into smaller files and copy them to USB.

[~ %]==> wimlib-imagex split /Volumes/CCCOMA_X64FRE_EN-US_DV9/sources/install.wim /Volumes/WIN-USB/sources/install.swm 4000

That's all, now you can eject this USB from MAC and use it to install windows on a PC.

Comments

An Introduction to Quartz Scheduler

It's a common use case to have an enterprise application, perform specific work, at a specific time or in response to a specific action. In other words, “There is an ask to execute a Job upon a predefined Trigger ”. This brings us to the need for a Scheduling System. A system, where Jobs & Trigger can be registered and the system will manage the remaining complexity. Thankfully for the Java systems, Quartz is for rescue. It‘s an open-source library that has been extensively used in enterprise applications for more than a decade. Components in Quartz Sub System: Following are the all major component in the Quartz subsystem: Scheduler : It’s the control room of Quartz. It maintains everything required for scheduling, such as managing listeners , scheduling jobs , clustering, transactions & job persistence. It maintains a registry of JobDetails , Listeners & Triggers , and executes Job & Listeners when their associated Trigger is fired. SchedulerFactor

Unable to Redo in VS-Code & Intellij

Since the beginning of personal computers, few keyboard shortcuts are common among all operating systems and software. The ubiquitous cmd+c (copy), cmd+v(paste) , cmd+z (undo) and cmd+y (redo) I am not sure why, both of my favorite IDEs, Visual Studio Code & Intellij decided to not use cmd+Y for redo.Below are the quick steps to configure cmd+Y for a redo in VS-Code & Intellij Visual Studio Code Open VS Code & Go to keyboard shortcuts There will be a search bar at the top Type “ redo “ in the search bar. You can see on my system its still mapped to shift+cmd+z Double click on ⇧ ⌘ z and the below box will appear. Do not click anywhere or type anything on the keyboard except the key you want to assign, in our case it was cmd+y, so type cmd+y Press Enter and you are done. Now you can use cmd+z for undo and cmd+y to redo like always Intellij It is also as simple as VS-Code Open IntelliJ & go to Preferences In the search bar search for the redo. In the ri

My Custom Built Desktop. The Questions & The Answers!

If you want to avoid overpriced pre-builts like the M1 Mac Mini, Mac Pro, or Dell XPS Desktop without compromising on performance, a self-built desktop is a preferred option. It's also a great choice if you enjoy building things. custom built with ASUS-PRIME-P If you choose to build a custom PC, be prepared to invest time in researching and assembling compatible components. In this post, I'll share my experience building this colorful powerhouse. I'll cover: Why did I do it. Key questions to ask when selecting components Thought process behind component choices Components used in my build Benchmark comparisons . ** My second custom-build **. *** Disclaimer: Not an Apple product. Just a free apple sticker is used *** Why did I do it I decided to get a desktop during the pre-MacM1 era (yes, that’s a thing). After browsing many websites, I found that well-configured prebuilt PCs were overpriced, while cheaper ones had subpar components. Unable to choose between the option

Time Zones, Meridian, Longitude, IDL… It's more politics than science.

Once, I was working on a few geospatial APIs handling many time zones. While writing tests, I realized I did not know much about timezones. A lame excuse might be, my subpar schooling as a village kid. Nevertheless, I decided to turn the pages on timezones, what I found was more politics than science. Photo by Arpit Rastogi on Unsplash Before diving into anomalies, let’s talk about history then we will go to science followed by politics. History The world without time zones By 300 BCE, the western world agreed that the earth is round. Each developed civilization devised its unique distinct system to measure distances, times & absolute locations, but relative to prime locations within their civilizations. It all worked in ancient times because long-distance travel was not prevalent among common people. Only merchants or armies traveled long distances. And they already developed systems that worked on their predetermined routes, irrespective of the time differences between locatio

BDD (1) — Behavior Driven Development

A wise man ( narcissist me ) once said, “Life is all about the question and answers. The trick to a meaningful life is, To ask the right questions to yourself, so you can get on the right path to search for the answer .” The very first question one should always ask oneself is WHY. Let's discuss our WHY in the current case. Why BDD Let's take a step back and start with the well-known software development practice TDD ( Test-Driven Development). In TDD, the very first thing developers do is, set up the technical expectations from the code by writing failing test cases. After the expectation is set, the code is written/modified to finally pass all of the failing tests. It's an Acceptance driven development strategy . TDD works fine to create a robust technically working product. But the whole TDD approach revolves only around technical teams. It barely involves the business analysis or product owners to validate the business aspect of a feature, they get involved only aft

kaleidoscope

Search This Blog