Problem Creating Installation Material for Windows 2010

Question

I know it is old, but I need to recover an old system.

I download the Media Creation Tool: MediaCreationTool_22H2.exe

I was using a Windows 2010 system and tried to run it and got:

There was a problem starting Setup. Close the tool, restart your PC, and
then try running the tool again.

I did not understand why restarting the system would help but I did it. When I tried to run the Media Creation Tool I got the same results.

What do I have to do to get this to work?

Answer 1

The installation media will only do a repair if the system was booted from the C:. If the system was booted from the installation media, it will only do an installation.

Answer 2

Try repair options via Windows Recovery Environment (Startup Repair, System Restore, etc.), or
How do you get to the Windows Recovery Environment?

Answer 3

The problem was that I had to be logged in as an administrator.

Answer 4

The Media Creation Tool for Windows 10 must be run on a supported, working version of Windows and sometimes fails if the current Windows installation is too damaged or misconfigured. The generic “There was a problem starting Setup” message plus the restart suggestion indicates the tool cannot start its setup phase correctly on that system.

To proceed, use this approach:

1. On a different, working PC
   1. Go to the official software download site and download the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool as described in the documentation.
   2. Run MediaCreationTool.exe there and let it create installation media (USB flash drive or ISO). The tool “walks through creating installation media” on that working PC.
   3. Ensure the USB flash drive is at least 8 GB and blank, because “any content on the drive is deleted.”
2. Use the created media on the old PC
   1. Connect the USB (or insert the DVD) into the old Windows 10 system.
   2. Boot the old PC from this installation media (you may need to change boot order in firmware/BIOS, as described in the clean-install steps).
   3. From the Windows Setup environment you can:
      • Try repair options via Windows Recovery Environment (Startup Repair, System Restore, etc.), or
      • Reinstall Windows using the installation media. This can be an in‑place reinstall (to keep files and apps when possible) or a clean install (which removes files, apps, and settings).

If the old PC will not start at all, or recovery options do not work, the documentation explicitly recommends reinstalling Windows using installation media created on another working PC.

Before doing any reinstall or clean install, back up any data that can still be accessed from the old system to external storage or cloud, because a clean installation “removes all of the following items: personal files, apps, customizations, and any changes made in Settings.”

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References:

• Create installation media for Windows
• Reinstall Windows with the installation media
• Recovery options in Windows
• Backup, restore, and recovery in Windows