Media Creation Tool Error 0x80042405 0xA001B

Tough this shouldn't be needed and it's not for the novice, what I did has never failed me and you don't need Rufus.

After the tool errors, leave the error up. Try to open the USB drive. Windows will prompt you to format it. Do this. Open your root drive (C-drive?). Find the folder in the address of the screen shot I posted and copy everything to your USB drive. 

After you're finished, closing the error will delete the folder off your root drive and you'll have to run the tool and have it download the files all over again.

Guess I am gonna try it. After copying the files from the folder to the USB is it enough to just boot the PC from the USB?

Yes. Strangely enough, no other prep work needs to be done. The USB drive will be bootable. You do need to do what it takes to make the PC boot from USB drive instead of disk drive of course 😊

Yes. Strangely enough, no other prep work needs to be done. The USB drive will be bootable. You do need to do what it takes to make the PC boot from USB drive instead of disk drive of course 😊 

Thanks.

Just like you said, I ran the tool, left the error up, formatted the USB after trying to open it and searched for the folder.

Surprisingly, I didn't have exactly the same folder as yours, but the creation date was right and - more importantly - its name also had these "$" and ".~" symbols (unfortunately I can't remember the exact label, but certainly it was slightly different). What is more, there were only two or three files inside (that's strange).

So I deleted that folder and ran the tool again. It worked out.

I am not 100% sure that applying the procedure above is the reason why this time it was successful, because I also changed the flash drive. Or, who knows, maybe it was just luck. Nevertheless, I think that checking what is there on the local disk and copying/deleting these files can be viewed as a sort of solution to the problem. It still requires a little bit of fake-it-till-you-make-it approach, but at least you're not doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

I must be doing something wrong because I always have the update fail with some BS error like this. What are the proper steps to run this tool?

I download the tool to the desktop. I'm on an Admin account. I insert a 16GB thumb drive. I format it. I start the tool. I point it to the thumb drive. During the phase where the files are copied to the USB, I get some stupid error like this:

Why are my steps not good enough? Where is the hole in my logic? Or is this tool just written poorly. I'd like to use stronger language here as I used to have to start it all over again and burn bandwidth trying this failed endeavor over and over.

I've heard people make it work by running the tool FROM the USB. Why would that matter? I've tried to write files to the thumb drive just after the format and before running the tool to make sure I have successful writes. Doesn't help. 

As a workaround today, I left the error up for a bit. Tried to access the thumb drive and it said it needed to be formatted AGAIN! So I did. Then I just opened the C:$Windows.~WS\Sources\Windows and copied the files to the drive by hand. Made the dang thing myself! WHO WRITES THIS STUFF??

Today I struggled with creating a USB with Media Creation Tool 1903. First three attempts I kept getting this error. Fourth attempt was successful.

I used a 16GB Sandisk USB stick. First 2 attempts I quick formatted the drive Fat32, got the error. Third attempt I chose NTFS, got the error. On the fourth I went back to Fat32 and was planning to leave the error up and copy the files manually, but to my surprise the process completed successfully without any error.

On the first three attempts I had file explorer window open during the whole process. On the fourth I closed the file explorer window right after running the tool. Now i don't know if that actually made a difference, but just thought I'd share that since it's the only thing I did different during the successful attempt.