Windows 8 USB bootable

Wow, that was easy. I finally managed to get a Windows 8 OEM 64-bit ISO.
Following this: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...e-windows.html

I have a friend who bought a laptop with Windows 8 on it. It's an HP something. It comes preloaded with a ton of crudware. It doesn't have an optical drive. I do have an external DVD drive but figured I'd try to use a bootable USB instead.

So here's what's happening:
- I got the Win8 ISO (which is an unofficial official ISO -- which evidently seems to be very hard to get)
- I then got this: http://rufus.akeo.ie and saved it to my Desktop along with the ISO
- Ran it and now have a bootable USB (that was easy!)
- Then when I boot the laptop to this, it will get the product key from the UEFI BIOS

So in other words, finally I think I found something good about W8. The install process will be a lot easier than before.

Anyway, I'm sure most of you already know about this but just in case you don't, I'm passing along the info. I figured since I'm going through this process I might as well document what I'm doing.

Lame. It didn't boot from the USB key. Not sure if it's the key that's not working or the laptop. Either way, now I'm just burning the ISO to a DVD and try that instead.

*sigh* .... I remember the good old days when you could set the BIOS to boot from a CD and then proceed to just install it. Such a simpler time. But these days you got EUFI, legacy, boot volumes, CD's, DVD's, USB's.... where does it end? They try to make it so that non-technical people can do this. But in the end, they are just making it so that nobody can do it. You are forced to just accept their bloated crapware install of Windows. Lame.

Download the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool from Microsoft.

It's super effective

I ended up burning it to a dvd and hooking up and external dvd drive. It's amazing how much hassle it is to do this though.

- First have to install Windows 8 (because the product key is burned into the board and won't work with 8.1)
- Then have to do ALL the Windows updates (which were painfully slow,... not sure why).
- THEN you finally get to do the 8.1 update (again, painfully slow).

Took me 3 days to go from formatting the disk to having a completely updated clean install of Windows 8.1 with update 1.