Writing Kobo WiFi image in 2023 with Win 10?

[bizzybody]

The two recommended utilities for writing the image, USB Duplicator Image Writer from vconsole and Alexander Beug's USB Image Tool do not work.

They cannot see any SD cards no matter how I connect them to my Windows 10 Pro x64 computer.

So I've tried Win32Dix Imager and Rufus. Both see the SD cards without a problem.

But what I get on the card does not have any 10 megabyte partition at the start of the card.

I've tried putting cards written with this image in the external slot, holding the center button of the D pad then poking the reset on the back. Nothing happens.

Holding the center of the D pad then power has it lighting the first 5 squares then it freezes. If it's not going to boot from a micro SD in an adapter in the external slot, there's no point in taking it apart to put it in the internal slot.

I tried holding Menu while turning it on. It did prepare the 200 meg upgrade partition but just like with the normal FAT32 partition, Windows sees it as unallocated. I plugged in a USB cable, then unplugged it and it restarted, and did the super long bootup.

EVERY TIME I start this Kobo normally it takes what seems like 10 minutes or more it has the Fat32 partition hidden and the Kobo support in Calibre cannot detect it, nor can the official Kobo desktop software.

Can I use Windows Subsystem for Linux to write the image to see if it does it the right way?

[Quoth]

Try booting a Linux Mint (Mate Desktop) installer on a USB stick. Can be used as a "Live CD". Then use gparted or USB stick image writer (with SD card in a USB adaptor) on the USB booted Linux to image the Kobo file.

Note 1: It won't hurt your Win10 install, unless you click on Install icon and also select "Erase Disk". No install needed.

Note 2: You can't image the SD card while it's in the Kobo.

Note 3: AFAIK the external SD slot only reads content, no boot, but maybe the Kobo Wireless (N647 aka N47) is different to later Kobo ereaders. The oldest Kobo I've seen/used was the Kobo Touch.