Oofhours Media Tool 1.0 Portable
Creating an ISO for Windows 10 or Windows 11 is quite easy. You take the MediaCreationTool for Windows 10 or Windows 11 from Microsoft and have an ISO created either like this or on a stick.
Michael Niehaus has now created his own tool called OofhoursMediaTool. His website was the namesake here. The tool is interesting. It downloads the official *.esd file from Microsoft and then creates the ISO. You can select an edition (SKU) and that is exactly what is then extracted from the *.esd and you then get the ISO. That was the general explanation now.
For the editions, it's a little more complicated. A lot of editions are displayed. But since the Consumer.esd files from Microsoft only include the Core (Home), Education and Professional (all also as N versions). Or the Business.esd containing Education, Professional and Enterprise (the N versions here as well), only these can be created as ISO.
After downloading both the Windows 10 and Windows 11 manifests, it will let you choose between OSes (Windows 10 22H2 and Windows 11 22H2), architectures (x64, ARM64, x86 [Windows 10 only]), languages (lots of them), and Windows editions (lots of them too). All total, there are 5174 combinations (although some of those don’t actually exist, more on that later). After choosing which one you want, the app will download the referenced ESD file, export the selected image from it, and create an ISO file that can be used to install the OS.
If you only need one edition, then the tool is quite good. The advantage is that the *.esd is retained. You can start the tool again and create a Pro (Professional) in addition to an Enterprise. Without having to download the esd again.
In order to have the ISO written to a stick, you need Rufus, for example. If you want several ISOs on a stick or an external hard drive, you can use Ventoy. This function was too complex to implement for Michael. But both tools do their job.
Michael Niehaus has now created his own tool called OofhoursMediaTool. His website was the namesake here. The tool is interesting. It downloads the official *.esd file from Microsoft and then creates the ISO. You can select an edition (SKU) and that is exactly what is then extracted from the *.esd and you then get the ISO. That was the general explanation now.
For the editions, it's a little more complicated. A lot of editions are displayed. But since the Consumer.esd files from Microsoft only include the Core (Home), Education and Professional (all also as N versions). Or the Business.esd containing Education, Professional and Enterprise (the N versions here as well), only these can be created as ISO.
After downloading both the Windows 10 and Windows 11 manifests, it will let you choose between OSes (Windows 10 22H2 and Windows 11 22H2), architectures (x64, ARM64, x86 [Windows 10 only]), languages (lots of them), and Windows editions (lots of them too). All total, there are 5174 combinations (although some of those don’t actually exist, more on that later). After choosing which one you want, the app will download the referenced ESD file, export the selected image from it, and create an ISO file that can be used to install the OS.
If you only need one edition, then the tool is quite good. The advantage is that the *.esd is retained. You can start the tool again and create a Pro (Professional) in addition to an Enterprise. Without having to download the esd again.
In order to have the ISO written to a stick, you need Rufus, for example. If you want several ISOs on a stick or an external hard drive, you can use Ventoy. This function was too complex to implement for Michael. But both tools do their job.
Changelog
Updated 2023-03-29 15:40: Uploaded a new zip file with a modified app. This version includes a manifest that causes it to prompt for elevation when run, and a new checkbox to specify that the image should be compressed using normal (maximum) compression. I also fixed a bug in the “no prompt” setting that causes the generation process to fail if checked.
Updated 2023-03-30 00:50: Uploaded another new zip with a modified app that addresses a problem running on OSes running multi-byte charactersets (e.g. Korean). PowerShell wasn’t reading the XML content properly so it could not get the list of images. StackExchange to the rescue.
Updated 2023-03-30 11:00: Uploaded another new zip with a modified app that adds logic to make the “Browse” button actually do something.
Updated 2023-03-30 00:50: Uploaded another new zip with a modified app that addresses a problem running on OSes running multi-byte charactersets (e.g. Korean). PowerShell wasn’t reading the XML content properly so it could not get the list of images. StackExchange to the rescue.
Updated 2023-03-30 11:00: Uploaded another new zip with a modified app that adds logic to make the “Browse” button actually do something.
Screenshots
Homepage
OS: Windows 10 / 11 (x86-x64)
Language: ENG
Medicine: FreeWare
Size: 0,05 MB.
Download From Homepage:
Portable
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