How to create a Windows 8.1 flash drive in uefi mode

One of the things that bothers me the most when buying a laptop or any other branded computer is to turn it on for the first time and find all the bloatware that the manufacturer on duty has deemed convenient to install.

So the next step I usually take is to reinstall Windows from scratch by formatting the hard drive.

Little by little on the part of all manufacturers, the adoption of UEFI, the new specification that will replace our old BIOS, is taking place, so it is not uncommon that most of the moderately modern laptops and desktops already bring it with him.

This fact translates into a variation of the process of creating a USB memory to install Windows that we have been traditionally carrying out in order to be able to take advantage of all the advantages and benefits offered by this new “BIOS”, among which is a significant increase boot, improving the one that goes from the post until the boot yields to the operating system.

At this point, the first thing that arises is two problems:

• How to use our original Windows 8.1 license that comes with our pc How to get a copy of Windows 8.1

Currently this is not a problem, Microsoft makes our task much easier and it is no longer necessary to search the Internet for any ISO of dubious origin or waste time with telephone activations or fight with cracks and activators.

New laptops with UEFI already have the license written directly on it, so even if we format or replace the hard drive when installing Windows, it will be automatically activated online as soon as we connect it to the Internet. First problem solved, let's continue.

The next step is to obtain a copy of Windows 8.1, nothing much more difficult, we can officially download it from the Microsoft website.

Click on the "Create media" button and run the file mediacreationtool.exe that we have downloaded.

We just have to select the language, the edition of Windows 8.1 we want and the architecture. Then we will mark the ISO File option to directly obtain the file and choose the location where we want to save it.

Once we have carried out all the steps, all that remains is to wait for it to download to our computer, depending on your connection, it will take more or less since you will have to download some 3GB of data.

It is important to remember that to use the Windows installation media creation tool it is necessary to have a valid license for the version we are trying to download, since the utility will check it and if it is not valid or we try to obtain the iso of an edition PRO from a normal edition will ask us for a corresponding serial for that version.

Once the download is complete, it will check that all the files have been downloaded correctly and it will create an ISO file, and all that remains is to save the image to a USB memory in UEFI mode. Not all Windows USB creation utilities support UEFI mode, in fact it is not possible with Microsoft's Windows USB / DVD download tool.

Also remember that a minimum 4GB USB memory is necessary to record the Windows 8.1 iso

In our case we will use Rufus for this purpose. Rufus is a utility to format and create bootable USB drives, such as USB sticks, memory cards, etc. that also has the support of GPT partitions and UEFI systems.

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We can download the latest version from its official page, version 2.1 at the time of writing this article:

Its use is very simple and intuitive, but for the creation of a bootable UEFi USB it is very important to select the ISO file first and then the options since otherwise when selecting the ISO it is possible that it marks other options and we do not create the USB correctly, making a normal bootable USB with which we will not be able to obtain all the benefits of UEFI systems. In the latest versions, it usually detects and correctly configures all the options, but it is not necessary to follow the steps just in case:

1. Select our previously downloaded Windows 8.1 ISO Type of partition and target system -> GPT for UEFI computer File system -> FAT32 Cluster Size -> 4096 Bytes Click on Start.

At this point you will warn us that all the data will be deleted and the process will begin. In a few minutes we will have our USB ready to install Windows 8.1 on UEFI systems and we will be able to use them to format our computer freeing ourselves from the odious bloatware.