Can we restore main boot menu in PE environment?Can bootable usb be added to main boot menu in PE environment? Answer is YES.

I used 4 GB pen drive , format it as NTFS, Mark the partition as ACTIVE.
My pc has Five OS , 3 are of Windows 11, 1 OS of Windows 10, and 1OS of Windows 8.1 pro (all Pro versions)
I run CMD as administrator.
Changed to 4 GB pen drive letter..
c:\windiws\system32>T:
T:>bcdboot c:\windows>system32 /s T: /f ALL
I repeated above command four times again replacing c: with D:, E: , G:, H: one by one.
Boot files successfully added.(each time) Attaching Windows 11 bootable pendrive run Recovery.bat file available in www.tenforum.com Note down drive letter of Windows 11 bootable usb drive.
Type that letter when recovery.bat is run.
Now reboot pc, press any key to boot from 4GB pen drive , you will see the main boot menu with recovery option added. You can boot to any installed OS.
When recovery option is clicked, pc restars, here again press any key to boot from bootable USB pendrive. This time Windows 11 setup runs.
Change winload.efi to winload.exe depending upon MBR or GPT style.

Ramesh Sharma said:

I used 4 GB pen drive , format it as NTFS, Mark the partition as ACTIVE.
My pc has Five OS , 3 are of Windows 11, 1 OS of Windows 10, and 1OS of Windows 8.1 pro (all Pro versions)
I run CMD as administrator.
Changed to 4 GB pen drive letter..
c:\windiws\system32>T:
T:>bcdboot c:\windows>system32 /s T: /f ALL
I repeated above command four times again replacing c: with D:, E: , G:, H: one by one.
Boot files successfully added.(each time) Attaching Windows 11 bootable pendrive run Recovery.bat file available in www.tenforum.com Note down drive letter of Windows 11 bootable usb drive.
Type that letter when recovery.bat is run.
Now reboot pc, press any key to boot from 4GB pen drive , you will see the main boot menu with recovery option added. You can boot to any installed OS.
When recovery option is clicked, pc restars, here again press any key to boot from bootable USB pendrive. This time Windows 11 setup runs.
Change winload.efi to winload.exe depending upon MBR or GPT style.

Click to expand...

Most pcs will not boot from an NTFS formatted usb flash drive.
Most require a fat32 formatted drive.

Also, you only really need to install onr OS, and you can do rest more easily from Windows. Problem in winpe mode drive letters may not be as you expect them to be in Windows.

Easybcd is a great tool for rebuilding a boot menu as it is easy to rename entries, reorder then etc.

Sure you can use bcd commands but when you have 7 boot entries (and some are winpe entries), it can get very tedious.


I find a much easier way of restoring boot menu is to boot from a Macrium Reglect USB flas drive and click 'fix windows boot problems" link, and then tidy up with easybcd.

Too much "Obfuscation here" by @Ramesh Sharma --- your method won't work on older PC's in any case as they can't boot from an NTFS partition as the previous poster has pointed out.

I have an external SSD drive which I can connect to a PC via a SATA-->USB connector and it shows "Classic" windows boot menu with WINPE as one of the options, Also on "Other options" I can boot Linux, or stand alone GPARTED (partition manager).


whether one wants to boot macrium to fix boot problems or simply run the Windows command bcdboot.exe is really a moot point. If you need to boot from an external device into windows 11 you'll need a small fat32 efi partition, then the rest can be an NTFS partition. If you want more than one OS on it create as vhdx filles.

You can boot MBR into Windows 10 if your PC supports MBR (BIOS) booting but if you do it that way you have to go through all the kefuffle of getting to the machines internal BIOS menu. Much easier especially on a laptop to have default as bootable external device before HDD.

@cereberus you know this stuff so just ignore - was directing at the OP. It's of course much easier in general to fix problems from a full windows OS than from a winpe environment.

I also use this method to test install various builds of windows before trying "for real" on the main machine's internal Windows HDD. I also like to have Win 10 around just in case something on W10 works but breaks on W11 or has been removed from W11.

cheers
jimbo

cereberus said:

Most pcs will not boot from an NTFS formatted usb flash drive.
Most require a fat32 formatted drive.

Also, you only really need to install onr OS, and you can do rest more easily from Windows. Problem in winpe mode drive letters may not be as you expect them to be in Windows.

Easybcd is a great tool for rebuilding a boot menu as it is easy to rename entries, reorder then etc.

Sure you can use bcd commands but when you have 7 boot entries (and some are winpe entries), it can get very tedious.


I find a much easier way of restoring boot menu is to boot from a Macrium Reglect USB flas drive and click 'fix windows boot problems" link, and then tidy up with easybcd.

Click to expand...

My PC will boot from an NTFS drive, in fact when I re-installed Windows 11 I extracted the ISO files to a partition on my SSD, formatted as NTFS. Booted and installed no problem, took less than 5 minutes

Regards everybody.
NTFS may not be compulsory.
I should try on FAT 32.

FAT 32 formatted pen drive works as well as NTFS formatted pen drive.
In my post please read the command as T:>bcdboot c\windows /s T: /f ALL

cereberus said:

Most pcs will not boot from an NTFS formatted usb flash drive.
Most require a fat32 formatted drive.

Click to expand...

That is not true at all. If you had stated that most PC's will not boot in UEFI mode from NTFS, that would be correct. However, legacy booting (non-uefi) has always been able to boot from NTFS for decades.

Ramesh, I think that I have a procedure all worked out that does what you want, but I need to make sure that I properly understand what you want to do.

Is your goal to be able to boot the image of any one of several OSes from the pendrive?

What I can provide to you: My procedure creates a pendrive with 2 partitions. The first partition is a small FAT32 partition guaranteeing that it will boot on any system. On the second partition you can put an unlimited number of ISO images. At this point, you can run a batch file on the pendrive and it will make any ISO image on the pendrive bootable, showing a menu of available images you can select from.

If you have no access to a system where you have Windows, an added benefit is that the pendrive is already bootable so you can boot it and then select the ISO image you want to make bootable. It will reconfig the pendrive and make your selected image bootable so the next time you boot it will boot the image you selected. When done, you run another batch file and it reverts to the original configuration, all ready to go again.

As an example, I have my pendrive set to allow booting of any of the following:

Windows 10 21H2 (original release)
Windows 10 21H2 with latest updates
Windows 10 21H2 sysprep customized
Windows 11 21H2 (original release)
Windows 11 21H2 with latest updates
Windows 11 21H2 sysprep customized
Windows 11 22H2 (original release)
Windows 11 22H2 with latest updates
Windows 11 22H2 sysprep customized
Windows 11 22H2 with drivers for my desktop preinstalled
Windows 11 22H2 with drivers for my laptop preinstalled
Macrium Reflect Recovery Disk
Veritas System Recovery Boot Disk

If this sounds at all like what you want to accomplish, let me know.

Good Morning @hsehestedt .
Genius idea from you.
Thanks for considering me and my thread.I respect you Sir.
Exactly I wanted the same you got it.
A simple windows user should recover boot menu very easily to boot into selected windows os (installed on hard disk). Also one should be able to run Windows 11 bootable setup from this pen drive. One may have to press any key again on restart to run Windows 11 bootable USB. Please change winload.efi to winload.exe in recovery.bat file to boot if partition style is MBR.
Recovery option is to be run from pen drive after booting any Windows from this pen drive, otherwise Recovery option will be added to main menu of hard disk PE environment.
Sir, I request you to post bat file you have created.
My regards to everyone.

NavyLCDR said:

That is not true at all. If you had stated that most PC's will not boot in UEFI mode from NTFS, that would be correct. However, legacy booting (non-uefi) has always been able to boot from NTFS for decades.

Click to expand...

Sure but I have not used legacy bios for years, so was imprecise.