32

I have Ubuntu 14.10 with WinUSB and I have a Windows 8.1 Pro ISO with a 4GB SD Card with an empty FAT32 partition. Everytime I try to use it, it says "Installation failed, exit code: 256". How do I fix this?

kprovost7314
  • 387

7 Answers7

39

I started winusb from console:

gksudo winusbgui

then winusb detect my pendrive correctly, and I succesfully copied the Windows 7 installer to my pendrive (Ubuntu 14.10).

David Foerster
  • 36,890
  • 56
  • 97
  • 151
hyperblaster
  • 391
27

For some reason winusb kept hanging up on formatting the USB drive, said it couldn't access the drive. I ended up formatting to NTFS using the "Disks" application in Ubuntu and then using winusb from the terminal:

sudo winusb -v --install Win_7_Pro.iso /dev/sdc

NOTE: you can check to see what your usb device is using lsblk from a terminal, mine was sdc.

snoop
  • 4,110
  • 9
  • 41
  • 58
Patrick
  • 271
10

I faced the same error, and tried too many fixes until found the fix. Here is the fix in my case (I hope it works for you too):

  1. open GParted app then unmount the USB stick.

  2. open WinUSB or WoeUSB (a fork of WinUSB) and choose the .iso Windows file, and choose the USB stick. Everything goes right!

If you need to see the fix visually, I made a video on YouTube for the fix.

Abanoub Hanna
  • 149
3

I just dealt with the same problem... Maybe it will help somebody:

I was getting this error when I clicked TARGET DEVICE and INSTALL, but if you click OPTIONS and SHOW ALL DEVICES and then you select your TARGET USB drive, it works... or at least it did in my case.

Of course my drive was formatted as NTFS!

EDIT: At the end of process error appeared, but Windows installation booted just fine.

RiddleMeThis
  • 1,076
2

If the Win8.1 is 64bit I understood (reading results from a Google Search) that you need at least 8GBs.

And obviously NTFS, not FAT. Indeed, I quote an excerpt From the help:

$ winusb --help
winusb usage
Install a windows ISO on an NTFS partition and edit MBR of the device
[...]

And from the CLI you can also ask for the verbose mode, maybe you can have more informations on the error.

dadexix86
  • 6,776
1

You may have to format it as ntfs. Do sudo apt-get install gparted (skip this step if you already have it installed) then format it as ntfs.

Penguino32
  • 21
  • 1
1
sudo winusb -v --format Win10.iso /dev/sdb

This completely formats USB and installs iso image.

Stepan Pakholok
  • 69