Oops! Microsoft confirms Windows 11 media creation tool is broken for Windows 10 users

Tomorrow, October 14, is the day on which Microsoft ends mainstream support for Windows 10. As such, there is a lot of interest – perhaps not quite as much as Microsoft might like – in switching to Windows 11 and potentially using the Windows 11 media creation tool.

So, the news from the company that the “Windows 11 media creation tool might not work as expected on Windows 10” could not really have come at a worse time. Microsoft has some advice and help for anyone affected by the malfunction, however.

Microsoft posted a message in the known issues and notification section of the Windows release health pages for Windows 10 22H2, saying: “The Windows 11 media creation tool version 26100.6584, released September 29, 2025, might not work as expected when used on Windows 10 devices. The media creation tool might close unexpectedly, displaying no error message”.

The post continues:

The media creation tool is used to create a bootable USB or DVD which can be utilized to perform a reinstall or clean install of Windows 11 on a new or used PC. Note that the Windows 11 media creation tool is not currently supported on Windows 10 devices that use Arm64 processors.

While it is good that Microsoft is aware of the issue and has acknowledged, there is not yet a proper fix. This is something that the company says it is working on – there is a fairly typical message that says: “We are working on a resolution for this issue, and it will be released in a future update to the Windows 11 media creation tool. We will update this documentation when the resolution becomes available”.

In the meantime, there is the following suggestion:

Workaround: Bootable media can be downloaded directly on the Microsoft site for Windows 11. Visit https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11 and see the section titled "Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices".

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