Windows 8.1 USB Startup Disk Creator

Microsoft has a new way of creating installation media for Windows 8.1! This method involves downloading a portable executable named "mediacreationtool.exe". It is a Windows 8.1 assistant that retrieves the appropriate ISO files from their servers and creates bootable USB flash drives.

1. Visit the help page "Create installation media for Windows 8.1".
2. Select the "Create media" button to download the portable executable file.
3. Run the executable and follow the instructions that appear. I opted for plain Jane Windows 8.1 English (United States) of the 32-bit (x86) architecture.

This method surpasses the original Windows7-USB-DVD-Download-Tool-Installer-en-US.exe because it requires a .NET Framework absent from Windows 8 installations.