Boot from USB didn't work

glasskuter said:

Boot mode has to be changed in bios from UEFI mode to legacy BIOS before a 32 bit rescue disk will work.

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bobkn said:

A UEFI boot USB device must be FAT32. Or at least contain a FAT32 boot partition. Is that correct?

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bobkn said:

A UEFI boot USB device must be FAT32. Or at least contain a FAT32 boot partition. Is that correct?

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bobkn said:

I may have read that some UEFI motherboards can boot from an NTFS drive. I believe that I have never owned such a board.

Your recipe appears to create a FAT32 boot partition, plus an NTFS one for data.

I know that Rufus does that in creating a USB boot drive with an install.wim that is too large for the FAT32 4GB file size limit.

I don't use Rufus. I have used the dism utility to split install.wim into pieces compatible with a FAT32 drive. (I'm not adept with dism.)

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Hazel123 said:

You will maybe find out when you try and boot Windows 11 from usb . I suspect boot from usb does work but not with those programs due to them possibly being linux based and not having the video drivers needed - but that's just a guess. Assume you found the boot menu and selected the usb stick?

That guess was based on google and a few other people mentioning issues with Kaspersky rescue disk and Nvidia. If you get the same thing when trying to boot Windows 11 from usb then it's a computer issue. If a boot menu came up and you could select the usb stick then it can boot from usb.

The other possibility is if something wasn't burned to the usb stick properly/fully. Which program did you use to make the bootable usb? They can vary.

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hsehestedt said:

No! While it is true that some BIOS don't support booting from NTFS formatted UFDs (USB Flash Drives), this is NOT technically due to any lack of support by the UEFI specification. The maker of RUFUS has a detailed discussion about this very topic on their web site.

I use a method that I learned on TenForums several years ago that works for booting Windows images or WinRe / WinPE based media like Macrium Reflect recovery disk, etc. on ANY system. It doesn't matter if your system is BIOS or UEFI based.

Try this procedure. Note: The instructions are for making a Windows boot disk, but this applies also to other WinRE / WinPE based media.

Bootable Flash Drive Using Only Native MS Tools

1) Run diskpart.

2) From the diskpart> prompt, run this command:

list disk

3) From the size of the disks, try to determine which disk ID is your thumb drive. If that is not enough information, run these commands to get more detail on the disk. In this example, I want more info on disk 4:

select disk 4 detail disk

Here is some sample output:

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 476 GB 0 B *
Disk 1 Online 3726 GB 0 B *
Disk 2 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 3 Online 7452 GB 0 B *
Disk 4 Online 238 GB 0 B

DISKPART> select disk 4

Disk 4 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> detail disk

SanDisk Extreme Pro USB Device
Disk ID: DC727760
Type : USB
Status : Online
Path : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : UNAVAILABLE
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 7 Z My Software NTFS Removable 238 GB Healthy
C:\MountPoints\My Software\

4) When you determine the correct disk, run these commands. I am assuming disk 5 in the following example:

select disk 5 clean convert mbr create partition primary size=2000 active format fs=fat32 quick assign create partition primary format fs=ntfs quick assign exit

NOTE: The assign commands will assign the next available drive letter. If you want to assign specific drives letters, for example E:, use the command assign letter=E.

5) We will now copy files from the source to the two partitions on the thumb drive. To be clear, all the files and folders that you are being asked to copy come from your source folder such as a folder on your hard disk that contains all the Windows files, or from a mounted Windows ISO image.

Start by checking to see if your original source has a file called ei.cfg in \sources folder. If that file is already present, skip to step 6. Also, if you are working with something other than a Windows Setup image, please skip to step 6.

Create a text file called ei.cfg. We will use that below. Place the following 2 lines into that file:

[Channel] Retail

Notes about ei.cfg: Let's say that you have a computer that shipped with Windows 10 Home, but you upgraded to Pro. You may find that when you try to perform a clean install, Windows simply starts installing Home and doesn't even show you the menu from which you can select other editions. By placing this file in the sources folder, we prevent that from happening. This happens because Windows setup reads a signature in the BIOS that tells setup which edition of Windows the system was shipped with.

Note that when doing an unattended install, this file is not needed because the autounattend.xml specifies the edition of Windows to install, but you can leave the ei.cfg in place as it won't hurt anything.

6) Follow these steps to copy files to your thumb drive:

• Copy all files and folders EXCEPT the \sources folder to the FAT32 partition (the first, smaller partition).

• If you are planning to use an autounattend.xml answer file, place it in the root of either partition.

• Create a folder called sources on the FAT32 partition.

• Copy the file \sources\boot.wim to the FAT32 partition \sources folder.

• Create a folder called sources on the NTFS partition (the second, larger partition).

• Copy all files and folders from the \sources folder EXCEPT boot.wim to the \sources folder on the NTFS partition.

• If you created an ei.cfg file, copy it to the \sources folder of the NTFS partition.

At this point, you should have a bootable thumb drive.

NOTE: When booting you may be presented with an option to boot either the FAT32 or the NTFS partition. Choose the FAT32 partition. If it is not clear which one the FAT32 partition is, simply try either. If it doesn't work, reboot and try the other. Usually the FAT32 partition is listed first.

Click to expand...

hsehestedt said:

No! While it is true that some BIOS don't support booting from NTFS formatted UFDs (USB Flash Drives), this is NOT technically due to any lack of support by the UEFI specification. The maker of RUFUS has a detailed discussion about this very topic on their web site.

I use a method that I learned on TenForums several years ago that works for booting Windows images or WinRe / WinPE based media like Macrium Reflect recovery disk, etc. on ANY system. It doesn't matter if your system is BIOS or UEFI based.

Try this procedure. Note: The instructions are for making a Windows boot disk, but this applies also to other WinRE / WinPE based media.

Bootable Flash Drive Using Only Native MS Tools

1) Run diskpart.

2) From the diskpart> prompt, run this command:

list disk

3) From the size of the disks, try to determine which disk ID is your thumb drive. If that is not enough information, run these commands to get more detail on the disk. In this example, I want more info on disk 4:

select disk 4 detail disk

Here is some sample output:

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 476 GB 0 B *
Disk 1 Online 3726 GB 0 B *
Disk 2 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 3 Online 7452 GB 0 B *
Disk 4 Online 238 GB 0 B

DISKPART> select disk 4

Disk 4 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> detail disk

SanDisk Extreme Pro USB Device
Disk ID: DC727760
Type : USB
Status : Online
Path : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : UNAVAILABLE
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 7 Z My Software NTFS Removable 238 GB Healthy
C:\MountPoints\My Software\

4) When you determine the correct disk, run these commands. I am assuming disk 5 in the following example:

select disk 5 clean convert mbr create partition primary size=2000 active format fs=fat32 quick assign create partition primary format fs=ntfs quick assign exit

NOTE: The assign commands will assign the next available drive letter. If you want to assign specific drives letters, for example E:, use the command assign letter=E.

5) We will now copy files from the source to the two partitions on the thumb drive. To be clear, all the files and folders that you are being asked to copy come from your source folder such as a folder on your hard disk that contains all the Windows files, or from a mounted Windows ISO image.

Start by checking to see if your original source has a file called ei.cfg in \sources folder. If that file is already present, skip to step 6. Also, if you are working with something other than a Windows Setup image, please skip to step 6.

Create a text file called ei.cfg. We will use that below. Place the following 2 lines into that file:

[Channel] Retail

Notes about ei.cfg: Let's say that you have a computer that shipped with Windows 10 Home, but you upgraded to Pro. You may find that when you try to perform a clean install, Windows simply starts installing Home and doesn't even show you the menu from which you can select other editions. By placing this file in the sources folder, we prevent that from happening. This happens because Windows setup reads a signature in the BIOS that tells setup which edition of Windows the system was shipped with.

Note that when doing an unattended install, this file is not needed because the autounattend.xml specifies the edition of Windows to install, but you can leave the ei.cfg in place as it won't hurt anything.

6) Follow these steps to copy files to your thumb drive:

• Copy all files and folders EXCEPT the \sources folder to the FAT32 partition (the first, smaller partition).

• If you are planning to use an autounattend.xml answer file, place it in the root of either partition.

• Create a folder called sources on the FAT32 partition.

• Copy the file \sources\boot.wim to the FAT32 partition \sources folder.

• Create a folder called sources on the NTFS partition (the second, larger partition).

• Copy all files and folders from the \sources folder EXCEPT boot.wim to the \sources folder on the NTFS partition.

• If you created an ei.cfg file, copy it to the \sources folder of the NTFS partition.

At this point, you should have a bootable thumb drive.

NOTE: When booting you may be presented with an option to boot either the FAT32 or the NTFS partition. Choose the FAT32 partition. If it is not clear which one the FAT32 partition is, simply try either. If it doesn't work, reboot and try the other. Usually the FAT32 partition is listed first.

Click to expand...

Haydon said:

Wow, one may enjoy doing this as a hobby tinkerer, but poor me would buy a W11 installation USB stick from MS

FWIW, I already have an extra and full W10 Pro installation USB stick from MS > I could reinstall/upgrade my OEM machines to W10 Pro/W11 Pro most reliably at any time and frankly, in due time I would buy a new and extra and full W11 Pro installation USB stick from MS again and no, I am not a first born son of a Maharajah, I just find such expenses (that happen only once every 3 years) worth the peace of mind

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Hazel123 said:

So why won't his Trend Micro usb boot? I thought it might be linux based and not contain the correct graphics driver?

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Hazel123 said:

I have used a few bootable linux usb's too. He has Nvidia graphics and I wondered if that might have been the issue if no graphics driver.

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