Best Fixes for Windows 10/11 Media Creation Tool Not Working

Windows Media Creation Tool is a very useful tool that can help you upgrade your Windows system to the latest version or install the latest Windows 10/11 on your device. However, if Windows Media Creation Tool is not working, do you know how to fix it? You can find some easy solutions here.

What Is Windows Media Creation Tool?

Windows Media Creation Tool is an official tool from Microsoft. You can use it to upgrade your system to the latest version or install the latest Windows 10/11 on your device. MiniTool Software has talked about Windows 10 Media Creation Tool in this article: A Complete Guide to Windows 10 Media Creation Tool: How to Use.

However, the usage of Windows 10 Media Creation Tool and Windows 11 Media Creation Tool is slightly different.

For example，

You can use Windows 10 Media Creation Tool to:

Upgrade your PC to the latest version.
Create a Windows 10 installation USB drive.
Download a Windows 10 ISO file.

You can use Windows 11 Media Creation Tool to:

You see the only difference is that you can’t use Windows 11 Media Creation Tool to directly upgrade your PC now. But it is not a big problem. You can use Windows 11 Installation Assistant to update your system. The effect is the same.

Windows 10/11 Media Creation Tool is not preinstalled on your PC. You need to download it from the Microsoft software download site.

What if Windows 10/11 Media Creation Tool Is Not Working?

After downloading Windows 10/11 Media Creation Tool, you can directly open and run it to do what you want to do. However, some users report that their Windows Media Creation Tool is not working.

There are multiple scenarios for this problem. For example:

Windows 11 Media Creation Tool not working
Windows 10 Media Creation Tool not working
Windows Media Creation Tool won’t run
Windows Media Creation Tool won’t open
Windows Media Creation Tool couldn’t run on a PC
And more….

We propose some solutions to these problems. You can try them to help you out.

Fix 1: Re-Download Windows 10/11 Media Creation Tool

If Windows Media Creation Tool is not working or you can’t open it on your PC, you can delete the tool and download it again. This is the quickest way to solve this issue: you need to make sure your downloaded Media Creation Tool is complete.

Your internet connection should be enabled and work smoothly during the download process. This is also to ensure the integrity of the download. On the other hand, it also requires a good network connection when using Windows Media Creation Tool.

Fix 2: Run Windows 10/11 Media Creation Tool as Administrator

If the above method doesn’t work for you, you can run the tool as administrator to have a try. You can right-click the Media Creation Tool and select Run as administrator. If the User Account Control interface pops up, you need to click the Yes button to continue.

Fix 3: Create an AllowOSUpgrade Registry Key

Windows Registry is an administrative tool that saves information about your installed programs and services on your Windows PC. It contains an OSUpgrade registry key and it is related to your Windows update. You can create an AllowOSUpgrade Registry key to allow Windows Media Creation Tool to run and upgrade your system.

Tips:

You should back up the registry key in advance to protect your system.

Step 1: Click the search icon from the taskbar, then search for Registry Editor. Select Registry Editor to open this tool. If you receive the User Account Control interface, click the Yes button to continue.

Step 2: Go to the following path. You can directly copy and paste this path to the address bar and press Enter to open the path.

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade

Step 3: Right-click the OSUpgrade key and go to New > DWORD (32-bit) Value to create a new key. Then, rename the new key to AllowOSUpgrade.

Step 4: Double-click the newly created value to open it. Then, change the value data to 1.

Step 5: Click OK to save the change.

Step 6: Restart your computer.

After these steps, you can run Windows Media Creation Tool again and check if it runs normally.

Fix 4: Enable the Relevant Services

If Windows Media Creation Tool is not working on your PC, you also need to check if the Windows update relevant services are enabled.

You may disable one or more of the following services by mistake but you don’t it:

Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)
Server
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Workstation
IKE and AuthIP IPsec Keying Modules
Windows Update

Any service being shut down will affect Windows 10/11 Media Creation Tool. You can open Services to check.

Step 1: Press Windows + R to open Run.

Step 2: Type services.msc in the Run dialog and press Enter to open the Services app.

Step 3: Check if the above services are enabled. If one service is disabled, you can double-click that service and select Automatic for Status type. Then, click Apply and OK to save the change.

Step 4: Close Services.

After these steps, you can run Media Creation Tool again and see if it can run successfully.

Fix 5: Check the Available Space on Your System Disk

You should have at least 8 GB of free space on the C drive to run Media Creation Tool on your PC. You can go to File Explorer to check if the free space is enough. If not, you can delete unimportant files on the C drive to free up more space. You can also run Disk Cleanup to get more available space.

Here are 10 ways to free up disk space on Windows 10/11.

Fix 6: Use another Way to Upgrade Your PC

Using Media Creation Tool is not the only way to upgrade your PC. If you can’t use this tool to perform a Windows 10/11 update, you can use another way to do the job.

For example, you can check for updates in Windows Update, then download and install the available update on your device.

You can also download a Windows 10/11 disk image (ISO), create a Windows 10/11 installation USB drive using Rufus, and then install Windows 10/11 from USB.

Fix 7: Use another Way to Create a Windows 10/11 Installation USB Drive

If you can’t use Windows Media Creation Tool to create an installation USB drive, you can try another tool like Rufus to create a Windows installation USB drive. This method is free: Rufus is free for download, and Windows 10/11 ISO file is free for download. You just need to prepare a USB drive that has at least 8 GB of space.

Fix 8: Use another Way to Download a Windows 10/11 ISO File

If you can’t use Windows Media Creation Tool to download an ISO file due to Media Creation Tool not working or opening, you still have other choices to download a Windows 10/11 ISO file.

Microsoft allows you to directly download a Windows 10 ISO file (all editions) on a non-Windows device from the Windows 10 software download page. You can set a non-Windows agent in Chrome and then download a Windows 10 ISO file.

Windows 11 ISO download is different. You can download the Windows 11 disk image directly from Microsoft’s official site.

So, it is not a big deal if Windows Media Creation Tool is not working on your PC. You see, there are many ways to replace this tool.

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Recover Your Lost and Deleted Files on Windows 10/11

Usually, Windows 10/11 updates via Media Creation Tool will not delete files on your device. But to protect your files and system, you’d better use MiniTool ShadowMaker to back up your computer to an external hard drive. If a Windows update destroys your system or deletes your files, you can restore them using your backup.

MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

However, if there is no available backup to restore your files, what can you do to save your losses? You can try professional data recovery software like MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

It is a free file recovery tool that is specially designed to recover files from different types of data storage devices. This MiniTool data recovery software can work in different situations. For example:

When you permanently delete a file from your computer, you can recover it using this software as long as that file is not overwritten by new data.
When you can’t open a data storage drive, you can use this tool to rescue your files and then fix the inaccessible drive.
If you want to recover data from an SD card, you can also try this tool.
When your Windows system corrupts, you can boot your device from the bootable edition of this software and then recover data. After that, you can feel free to reinstall Windows or use other methods to fix the system.
If you can’t find some of your important files after upgrading Windows 10/11 to the latest version, you can run this software to scan the drive that previously saved the files and recover them.

You can first run the MiniTool Power Data Recovery trail edition to see if it can find your needed files and then decide whether to use this tool to recover data.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

You can follow these steps to recover data using this MiniTool software.

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

Step 2: You need to find the drive where the lost files were previously saved, hover over that drive, and then click the Scan button to start scanning.

Step 3: After scanning, this software will show you the files it finds. These files are listed by path by default. You can open each path to look for your needed items. If you want to find certain types of files, you can switch to Type to make this software display files by type, then you can find files by type.

To recover data using this software, you need to use a full edition of this software. You can get a license key from the MiniTool official site, then click the key icon from the above ribbon menu, enter the license key, and press Enter to register the software.

After registering the software, you can select all your needed files once, then click the Save button, and select a suitable path to save them. To avoid data from being overwritten, the destination folder should not be the original location of the lost files.

Wrap Things up

By reading this, you should know the things you can do to fix the issue if Windows Media Creation Tool is not working on your PC. You can take steps to resolve the problem. You can also use another way to do the same thing that Media Creation Tool should do for you.

Additionally, if you are looking for a data recovery program to retrieve your files, you can try MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

Should you have other related issues that need to be fixed, you can let us know in the comments. You can also contact us via [email protected].

About The Author

Stella Follow Us

Position: Columnist

Stella has been working in MiniTool Software as an English Editor for more than 7 years. Her articles mainly cover the fields of data recovery including storage media data recovery and phone data recovery, YouTube videos download, partition management, and video conversions.