How to Create A Ubuntu 16.04 USB Drive Using Windows 10

The latest version of Ubuntu is 16.04 and it is a long term support release which means it will be supported until 2021.

You do however need to make sure you choose the correct flavour. The choices are 64-bit or 32-bit.

Ubuntu will now start to download.

Download And Install Win32 Disk Imager

The file will now download. It is around 12 megabytes in size.

Double click on the downloaded file to start the Win32 Disk Imager setup wizard.

When the welcome screen appears click “Next”.

How To Format A USB Drive

How To Create A Ubuntu USB Drive

It is time to create a Ubuntu USB drive and this is the reason you downloaded and installed the Win32 Disk Imager application.

This application can be used for other Linux distributions as well as Ubuntu.

Turn Off Fast Boot

You only have to do this on computers with a UEFI bootloader.

In order to speed up the boot time, Windows prevents booting from a USB until it has fully loaded.

This obviously prevents Ubuntu booting from the USB drive which is of course a major issue.

You can turn off the fast boot option which resolves the problem.

Right click on the start menu in the bottom left corner and when the menu appears click on “Power Options”.

Click the link which says “Change settings that are currently unavailable”.

Scroll down the page until you see the option “Turn on fast start-up (recommended)” and turn it off
by unchecking the box.

Click “Save Changes”.

Now you might be wondering why I am recommending turning off a recommended option.As previously mentioned you can’t boot from a USB drive whilst this option is checked. In addition to this I feel that the option is a bit cloak and dagger. What it says is that if you have the option checked your computer will load faster.

The trouble is that once your computer has finished booting it will still go and do all of the things that it missed out on whilst booting to make it load faster but it will do it quietly in the background. This will use up resources until it has completed. In reality your start screen might appear more quickly but it hasn’t really booted and quicker.

How To Boot Into Live Ubuntu USB Environment (non-UEFI)

Make sure that the Ubuntu USB drive that your created previously is plugged into the computer.

If your computer has a standard BIOS simply reboot your computer and a menu should appear with an option to try Ubuntu.A large dialogue window will appear with options to install Ubuntu and to Try Ubuntu. Click on the “Try Ubuntu” option.

Ubuntu will now be loaded as a live session. You can try out all of the features of Ubuntu but if you reboot all the changes will be lost.

How To Boot Into Live Ubuntu USB Environment (UEFI)

If your computer has EFI then read on.

If you read the guide showing how to create a Macrium boot menu option then simply reboot your computer and the following screen will appear.

When that screen appears click on the “Change defaults or choose other options” link at the bottom of the screen.

If you chose not to create the Macrium boot menu option hold down the shift key and reboot your computer. (Keep the shift key held down until a screen similar to the one below appears).

Each manufacturer has a different version of UEFI and so the menu options may be different. The important thing is that a blue screen with white writing appears.

You are basically looking for the option to boot from the USB drive and this may take some finding.

From the image above I chose the “Choose other options” menu item which produced the screen below.

I then clicked on the “Use a device” option which as you can see has the subtext “Use a USB drive, network connection or Windows recovery DVD”.

A list of devices will now appear. This isn’t the first time I have installed things on this computer and my EFI partition still has links to old Ubuntu versions. The important link on this screen is the “EFI USB Device” option.

Choose the EFI USB Device option.An option should appear with an option to try Ubuntu.

Ubuntu should now boot from the USB drive.

A boot menu will appear. Choose the first menu option to try Ubuntu.

A large dialogue window will appear with options to install Ubuntu or to Try Ubuntu. Click on the “Try Ubuntu” option.

Ubuntu will now be loaded as a live session. You can try out all of the features of Ubuntu but if you reboot all the changes will be lost.

Summary

This guide shows you how to create a Ubuntu Linux USB drive using Windows 10.

Hopefully you have found it useful but if you have any comments with regards to the procedure please leave them below as it will help me improve the tutorial for future users.

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