Create a Windows 10 recovery disk on Linux

In this howto there are the steps to follow when a Windows 10 OS is not bootable anymore and you haven’t a recovery disk. This is a typical case after a new OS will be installed on Dual boot or boot partition was altered.

Download Windows 10 iso: Download the official Windows 10 image Prepare USB to be bootable: Open GParted with

the official Windows 10 image (https://www.microsoft.com)
GParted (https://en.wikipedia.org)

 gparted /dev/DEVICE-TO-ERASE

Select the USB drive

Device \> New partition table

Select GPT

Apply: this will delete any data on the USB

Create a new NTFS partition then Apply (do not use FAT32 since some files can be greater than 4GB)

Close GParted

Write files:

Unplug and plug USB

Copy all Windows files to the empty USB drive using 7zip with:

7z x -y -o/media/user/path-to-USB/ Win10_1809Oct_Italian_xiso

If something goes wrong during copy, you can mount the ISO image then rsync the source with the USB drive (the trailing slash is important):

 cd path/to/usb/drive rsync -avzp /media/myuser/CCCOMA_X64FRE_IT-IT_DV91/ .

umount

Add boot flag

Open GParted selecting the device just written Select the new partition then Select Partition \> Manage flags Select boot flag (esp will be auto-selected)

 

Use windows tools Follow this howto by MS to recover MBR, restore BCD or similar actions

this howto by MS (https://social.technet.microsoft.com)

You can follow these steps to write on a USB a recovery ISO from windows the same way.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190326000000*/https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/software-download/windows10ISO (https://web.archive.org)
https://web.archive.org/web/20190326000000*/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GParted (https://web.archive.org)
https://web.archive.org/web/20190326000000*/https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/51782.fixing-corrupted-mbr-in-windows-10.aspx (https://web.archive.org)