Rufus gets all the way to writing your bootable USB - then stops cold: access denied, or the drive is in use. The pen drive is almost never faulty. Something on your PC is holding it, and this page finds that something.
Error code 0x00000005 is Windows itself refusing Rufus permission to lock the drive for exclusive writing. Rufus needs that lock - two programs writing to one stick would corrupt it. So the fix is never inside Rufus's settings; it is about releasing the drive, in the order below, gentlest first.
Before any deep troubleshooting, close the obvious holders:
Recent Rufus versions report conflicting processes by name - 4.12 specifically improved this reporting. Open Rufus's log (the small log icon at the bottom of the window) after the failure and look for the process Rufus names. End that program and retry, instead of randomly killing things in Task Manager.
Real-time antivirus scanning can lock a drive while it inspects the new boot files, and Controlled Folder Access can block Rufus itself. Check your antivirus history for a blocked action at the time of the error. The honest way to handle this: confirm your Rufus is the genuine signed copy from rufus.ie first - then a scan lock is a false alarm you can work around by pausing the scan or excluding the USB. Never teach yourself to ignore antivirus warnings for a Rufus downloaded from anywhere else.
A surprising number of these errors are stale Windows handles. Unplug the stick, plug it into a different port - ideally directly on the PC, not a hub - and try again. Still locked? Restart the PC. A restart releases every handle at once, which is why it fixes this error more often than any setting change.
If the drive's partition state itself is confusing Windows, wipe its partition table from an administrator Command Prompt:
Replace 2 with the number list disk shows for your USB - identify it by its size. Then reopen Rufus and create the media again. Read the warning below before you press Enter on clean.
clean erases the partition table of the disk you selected, instantly and without a confirmation prompt. Run list disk, match the size to your pen drive, and check the number three times before pressing Enter. Selecting your Windows disk by mistake means reinstalling Windows - this is the one step in this guide that cannot be undone.The video shows a clean Rufus run with no lock errors - the way it should look when nothing is holding the drive.
▶️ Watch Full VideoAlmost never. The error means a process holds the drive, not that the drive failed. The same stick usually works immediately on another PC or after a restart. A genuinely dying drive fails differently - with write errors, disappearing capacity or extraction failures, not a clean permission refusal.
That is the classic antivirus moment - the scanner sees new boot code appear on the drive and locks it mid-write. Check the antivirus log for the exact time, confirm your Rufus came from rufus.ie, and retry with the scan paused for that drive.
No - a Rufus that will not launch is usually the wrong build for your machine (an x64 build on ARM, or the reverse) or a blocked download. Download the correct build from rufus.ie, verify the Akeo Consulting signature, and launch that copy.