Create Bootable USB of Windows 10 From ESD

The ESD file gets created when you upgrade from previous build of Windows 10 to the latest Windows 10 via Settings app. The ESD (ESD stands for Electronic Software Delivery) file contains all the files required to install Windows 10 operating system, and is usually smaller when compared to the ISO file of the same version and edition of Windows 10.

Since none of the bootable USB creation software out there support ESD files, we need to first convert the ESD file to ISO. So it’s important to first extract the ESD file and create an ISO image to be able to create the bootable media of Windows 10.

If you have an ESD file of Windows 10 and want to create bootable USB using the same ESD file to perform clean install or upgrade, you just need to follow the given below instructions.

Bootable USB drive of Windows 10 from ESD file

Method 1 of 1

We are using the ESD Decrypter tool to decrypt the ESD file and then convert the same to ISO image. Although the popular NTLite software also supports converting ESD to ISO image, it doesn’t support encrypted ESD files. Since it’s impossible to differentiate between encrypted and decrypted ESD files without opening the same with a software, we are going to use the ESD Decrypter which supports both encrypted and decrypted ESD files.

In this method, we will first convert the ESD file to ISO using ESD Decrypter before using the popular Rufus tool to create bootable USB from the ISO image file.

Step 1: The first step is to download ESD File Decrypter from here. Extract the downloaded .7z file to a New Folder using 7-Zip or WinRAR.

Note that the drive where you create New Folder must have at least 10 GB of free space as the size of the ISO file that we are going to create will be larger than the ESD file. In addition to that, ESD Decrypter creates a backup copy of the original ESD file before converting the same to ISO. So in order to run out of disk space during the file conversion job, it’s important to create the New Folder on a drive with at least 10 GB of disk space.

Step 2: Copy Windows 10 ESD file to the New Folder that contains extracted files of ESD Decrypter tool.

Step 3: Right-click the Decrypt.cmd file, click Run as administrator, and then click Yes button when you see the User Account Control dialog box to see the Command Prompt window.

Step 4: Here, simply press “1”key to begin creating the ISO image file out of the ESD file. This process might last up to 20 to 40 minutes, depending on available system resources and the size of the ESD file.

NOTE: ESD Decrypter automatically backs up the ESD file just in case something goes wrong. So the ESD file will still be available even after converting the ESD file to ISO image.

Step 5: Once done, you can find the new ISO file under the New Folder that you created in Step 2.

Step 6: Now that you have Windows 10 ISO image file, you can use Rufus, Windows USB/DVD Download Tool, or our how to install Windows 10 from USB guide to create the bootable USB of Windows 10 from the ISO image file. In this guide, we will use the Rufus as it’s not just easy to use but stable as well.

Step 7: Download Rufus 2.0. Connect your USB drive that you want to use to install Windows 10 and then run Rufus software.

Step 8: Select your USB drive from device list (if there are more than one connected USBs), and then select the partition scheme and target type as MBR partition scheme for BIOS or UEFI computers, or GPT partition scheme for UEFI computer (if you are sure that the disk type is GPT).

Step 9: Next, choose the file system as FAT32 as it’s compatible with both BIOS and UEFI.

Step 10: Finally, click the CD drive icon next to Create a bootable disk using option (make sure that the ISO image is selected as shown in the below picture) to browse and select the Windows 10 ISO image that you have obtained by converting ESD to ISO.

NOTE: When you select Windows 10 ISO, you’ll see Standard Windows installation and Windows To Go options. Be sure that the first option titled Standard Windows installation is selected before proceeding further as selecting the latter option will create Windows To Go drive of Windows 10.

Step 11: Finally, click Start button, click OK button when you see “all files on the selected USB drive will be erased” message to begin preparing the bootable USB of Windows 10.’

NOTE: If you’re getting “The file system currently selected can no be used with this type of ISO” error, please change the file system from the previously selected FAT32 to NTFS and click Start button again.

That’s it! You can now use the bootable USB of Windows 10 to to perform clean install of Windows 10.

Tip: There is another program to create a bootable USB of Windows from ESD file without converting the ESD file to ISO image but the utility doesn’t support Windows 10 yet. We will update this guide with another method once the software is updated to support Windows 10.

Hope this helps!