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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
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I'm becoming more and more convinced as I ponder these other responses and their fixes that the issue is some incompatible partition metadata residing on some usb drives. I'm thinking an alternate approach to the fix described in ronenfe's post of January 9, 2018 would be to use the diskpart "clean" command from Command Prompt or Power Shell with admin privileges and then do a quick format to FAT32 or NTFS.
Copying the file to the usb drive didn't work for me. And also formatting to ntfs didn't.
What worked was to delete the usb partition and recreate it as mentioned in one of the comments here:
"
Copying the Media Creation Tool to the USB drive worked for me but I was curious to try a few things.
It appears that running the Simple Volume Wizard fixes the problem without having to copy the Media Creation Tool to the USB drive.
This can be accessed in Computer Management > Disk Management.
Right click on the USB drive in the lower (graphical) part of the window and select Delete Volume.
Click Yes to the warning. If there are any volumes remaining, delete those also.
The entire USB drive should now show as Unallocated.
Right click on it again and select New Simple Volume.
Click through all the windows in the wizard using the default settings, selecting NTFS as the file system.
A new volume will be created.
Now run the Media Creation Tool without copying it to the USB drive.
"
This worked for me but with one twist, I decided not to format the drive in NTFS. It was Fat32 and since this is the more compatible option I picked that over NTFS. I formatted the Stick and started the Media Creation Tool from my PC and this time it worked. I also had my Antivir and Firewall turned off during the entire process.
So in some cases at least it would seem that the problem has something to do with either the partition scheme or formatting subtleties. There might be some metadata present on some USB drives that the Media Creation Tool just doesn't like.
This worked for me, thanks you beautiful bastard you.
Worked for me, too! Thanks man! :D
