Windows 10 Media Creation Tool Error: 0x80042405 - 0xA001A

Finally got it to work.  Not sure what was different that solved the problem.  Last time was with a freshly formatted NTFS flash drive and on a machine that had no 3rd party malware or virus protection.

Happy New Year!

Greetings,

Recently, I have seen many people inquiring about this error regarding the Media Creation Tool. I myself got this error when I try to create a bootable USB drive (aka Create an Installable Media).

Here's what I tried:

Reformatting USB drive to FAT32

Deleting files

Tried to locate and run Setupprep.exe (I couldn't find this file in C:\$Windows.~BT\Sources or anywhere)

Change Startup Type of Update-Related Services (Startup Type: Manual -> Automatic)

Uninstalled and Reinstall Windows 10 Media Creation Tool

Made sure my USB is above 8Gb as instructed by the tool (it is 15Gb)

The Fix (for me at least):

1. Downloadthe Windows 10 Media Creation Tool directlyinto the USB drive that you want to use as a bootable device (meaning you download the Tool into the same USB you chose to use as an Installation Media). If you already downloaded the tool on your PC's Desktop, copy it into your USB.

2. Run the Tool directly from your USB, meaning you open File Explorer, locate the MediaCreationTool.exe in your USB and double-click to run it.

The installer should then create an Installation Media/Bootable USB.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Tom

FINAL SOLUTION - This works 100% - Tried it 5 Times

1. Quick formatted the USB Flash Drive as NTFS
2. Give it a volume name of X
3. Disable ALL Malware and AV software
4. Copy the installer to the USB Flash Drive
5. Run the installer as Administrator from the USB Flash Drive
6. After starting the process of making a USB-based installer, close all browser and File Explorer windows.

This was painful and took a lot of time. I hope this helps.

Hi this didn't work for me. I tried numerous quick formats of my USB device with FAT and NTFS formats but the tool kept on failing at around 50%. What did work was a full (and tediously slow) format of my usb device before running the media creation tool.

**.**However, when I formatted the usb drive NTSF it worked flawlessly.  I was able to boot my crashing pc from the usb drive and reinstall windows 10.

This is finally what worked for me.  Thank you

Thanks HerculaPC.

Clearing the old partitions off of the USB drive and then creating an NTFS simple volume on it is what did the trick.  Just ran the media creation tool from the PC (no copying to the UDB drive)

I also tried running the MCT from the USB drive itself and got the same error as before.