Create bootable USB media using Rufus using the Windows 11 Insider Preview ISO image for a clean system installation and prevent potential problems when upgrading to new builds.
Sometimes there is a need to use a bootable USB flash drive with a clean image of Windows 11 to install the system from scratch. This measure will be useful when restoring a system due to a corrupted build, to prevent potential problems, or even to connect a new PC to the Windows Insider Insider.
Note: There are several third-party applications that allow you to convert a USB drive to a “bootable” format. This example uses a free and non-system resource-friendly Rufus program. You can use any other utility with similar functionality. The program must correctly perform two actions: convert the USB drive to the “bootable” format and convert the ISO image to the installation files.
Creating a Bootable USB Drive with Rufus
1. Download the required Windows 11 Insider Preview ISO image using UUP dump (or you can simply download the Windows 11 ISO file from here):
- Save the file and note the location.
- Connect the USB drive that you want to convert to a bootable flash drive.
IMPORTANT: All data on the drive will be deleted. Back up your important data before proceeding.
- The size of the USB drive must be at least 8 GB.
2. Run Rufus (or a similar program).
3. Configure rufus parameters as shown in the screenshot below.
Pay attention to the following:
- If you have multiple media connected via USB (external hard drive, flash drive, etc.), make sure that you select the correct drive in the drop-down list
- The flash drive must use the NTFS file system. If NTFS on the USB drive doesn’t work on your computer for some reason, you can format it to FAT32.
- Specify the volume label of your choice.
- Next to “Create a boot disk” you need to select the option “ISO image”. Click on the button with the disk icon and specify the location of the ISO image downloaded in step 1.
4. Press the “Start” button – Rufus will start formatting the USB drive and decompiling the ISO image.
5. After completing the process of creating a USB drive, you can use it to perform Windows installation.
You can also read our guides. We’ll look at several ways to perform a clean installation of Windows 11.
- How to Perform a Clean Installation of Windows 11 Using a USB drive
- How to Perform a Clean Installation of Windows 11 with the media creation tool
- How to Clean install Windows 11 using Reset this PC local image
- How to Clean install Windows 11 using Reset this PC Cloud download
- How to Clean Install Windows 11 from Advanced startup options
- How to Clean install Windows 11 using File Explorer and an ISO file.
