Building a Bootable Windows USB from Linux for Firmware Updates
Three devices on my PC have firmware that can only be updated through Windows tools: an ASMedia ASM4242 USB4 controller (ASUS firmware utility), an NZXT Kraken Elite AIO cooler (NZXT CAM), and a Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra webcam (Razer Synapse). Every other component - NVMe SSD, motherboard BIOS, fwupd-supported devices - has a Linux-native update path. These three don’t, and their vendors show no interest in changing that. The obvious answer is “just boot Windows.” But I don’t have a Windows partition, don’t want one, and installing Windows to flash three firmware blobs is absurd. I needed a way to boot a fully configured Windows environment from Linux, run the vendor tools, and shut down. No permanent installation, no dual-boot, no repartitioning. ...