Rufus has dropped support for installing Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Since these operating systems have been discontinued by Microsoft, supporting Windows 10 and Windows 11 already takes up a great deal of the developer’s time.
The last version of Rufus that runs on Windows XP is version 2.18, which you can download below.
Below, we list common issues along with their solutions.
Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition
This appears to happen only with certain USB drives on certain platforms, for reasons known only to Microsoft.
Here’s what you need to do to work around this issue:
- Delete all partitions on the drive (there’s no need to run diskpart as some suggest — you can simply use the partition selection screen)
- Unplug the USB drive.
- Click Next. You’ll get an error message:
- Windows is unable to install to the selected location. Error: 0x80300001.
- Plug the USB drive back in.
- Click Refresh.
- Click Next.
- Setup should now continue as expected.
Windows To Go
Starting with Rufus 2.0, Windows To Go is only available if you run Rufus on Windows 8 or later. If you run Rufus on Windows 7 or earlier, this option won’t be offered (although you can create Windows To Go drives from Windows 7 ISO images as long as you run Rufus on Windows 8 or later).
To create a Windows To Go drive, you should try to use a version of Windows that is at least the same as the version of the ISO you’re trying to build the To Go drive from. This means that if you want to create a Windows 8.1 To Go drive, you should run Rufus on Windows 8.1, Windows 10, or a later version of Windows.
For example, attempting to create a Windows 8.1 To Go drive on Windows 8.0 is not supported and will most likely result in errors during creation.
The Windows To Go option may not be available for all Windows images, especially those created with the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool. This is because Microsoft’s tools can produce ISO images that contain install.wim files incompatible with Microsoft’s own WIM extraction APIs (which Rufus uses). If that’s the case, you’ll see a line in the log that reads:
Note: This WIM version is NOT compatible with Windows To Go.
BSOD with Windows To Go drives created from Windows 10 1809 ISO images
Unfortunately, deleting user documents wasn’t the only quality issue Microsoft overlooked with the 1809 update. It also happens that they included a new version of the WppRecorder.sys driver, which has a serious bug when you try to run Windows from media accessed over USB. If you do this — and depending on the media used — you may encounter a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) at boot with the error code: DRIVER UNLOADED WITHOUT CANCELLING OPERATION against WppRecorder.sys.
If you want to run Windows 10 1809 as a Windows To Go drive, you should replace C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\WppRecorder.sys on your media with an earlier version, such as the one you can find in Windows 10 1803.
Please note: although we understand you’d prefer this driver to be replaced automatically by Rufus, the fact is that Rufus has to support more than just Intel x86 architectures when it comes to creating a Windows To Go drive. For example, Rufus lets you create an ARM64 Windows To Go drive if you have the appropriate ISO. Only Microsoft has the legal rights to distribute the driver binary. This means there’s no way to embed a “working” version of this file in Rufus. Even trying to replace the driver with the local system’s version (if one exists) can be problematic, since it would require the Windows To Go creation process to run from a version of Windows that isn’t already running 1809, with the same architecture as the image.
The developer’s recommendation: either use 1803 to create your Windows To Go drive, or wait for the next Windows 10 feature release, where Microsoft will fix this bug.
