Windows 11 is now available for everyone as Microsoft has released it publicly on the October 5th, 2021. Now we can download Windows 11 ISO directly from Microsoft servers. After downloading the Windows 11 ISO, you can burn it to a blank DVD and use the DVD to install Windows 11. You can also create a bootable Windows 11 installation USB drive for installing a fresh copy of Windows 11. Since the use of DVDs has been declning for past many years, more people want to create a bootable USB drive for Windows 11 installation.
Here is how you can create a bootable USB drive for installing Windows 11 fresh on a computer:
- Download Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft website using the instructions from: how to download Windows 11 ISO.
- Attach a USB drive with at least 8 GB storage capacity to any USB port of your PC. It is better that you use USB 3.0 drives as they are much faster than the older USB 2.0 drives.
- Download portable Rufus from https://rufus.ie/en/ and launch it.
- Select the Device to be the USB drive that you are going to use.
- Click on the SELECT button and choose the Windows 11 ISO that you downloaded in the step 1.
- Rufus will auto-arrange all the settings. Click on the START button and wait for Rufus finish copying all the files to your USB drive. You will get a message that bootable USB drive has been created.
In order to boot from the USB drive, you have to reboot your device and continuously press F12 at boot which will bring up the boot menu. From the boot menu, you can choose the target USB drive.
Rufus also warns that the created USB media can only be used if secure boot has been disabled on your computer. In order to disable the the secure boot, you can go into UEFI settings and find the secure boot option and then turn it off.