Hard drive crashed, can't boot from reinstall media

[dgish2001]

Hello. Hope someone can help. Ive been at this full time for a week and I'm at my wit's end. My laptop hard drive crashed last week. I made recovery media on CD originally, but can't seem to make them work. I bought an SSD drive to replace the old hard drive. I have Linux Mint installed on a USB stick for now so that's how I'm writing this. I have the Windows 10 ISO file from Microsoft and I'm attempting to install that onto another bootable USB stick to start a clean Windows install on the new SSD, but I haven't been able to make that boot. I have tried just about every permutation of settings and formats, using several different image writing programs in Linux, but none will boot. I have read dozens of posts here and on Microsoft's site, and looked up dozens of web pages of instructions on how to do this, but am not meeting with success. I can answer any questions for more info if needed and I would REALLY appreciate any help.

[WAWood]

@dgish2001 

I hope you're not just copying the ISO file to a USB stick -- because that will not work.

You can use this freeware app, and ISO file, and a USB stick to migrate the ISO contents to the USB stick while, at the same time, making it bootable -- https://rufus.ie/en/

But ... I believe this only runs in Windows so if you have no Windows PC available, that will be an issue.

A second option, in that case, is to use the Microsoft tool to create bootable USB media -- but you will have to download the files all over again to do that.

[dgish2001]

Hello and thanks for the reply. Yes I know you can't just copy the raw ISO file to the USB stick. The good news is I finally figured it out. I didn't have access to another Windows machine so I was stuck trying to do this with a temporary Linux install on a USB stick. I installed a Linux app called WoeUSB-NG, and that program worked after a few tries. The first few tries didn't work but I finally found a setting called Boot Flag in the options menu that finally got me going. None of the websites or posts I followed mentioned this setting and so I overlooked it. I had tried 4 other image writing programs that were mentioned around the web but couldn't get any of those to ever boot. I know just enough about Linux to be dangerous, but looks like a happy ending. Finally got Win 10 installed on the new SSD. Thanks again for your help!