Windows 10: Booting Windows from Thumb Drive

I'm still running Vista. I recently purchased a thumb drive with Windows 10 from Microsoft (only because they don't sell them on disc anymore, which is easy and I've done a clean install of Vista half a dozen times from CD-Rom).

Anyway, I plug in the thumb drive, I reboot, go to BIOS, set to boot from USB-HDD. Exit that, and a screen comes up with the device (my USB with Windows 10) at the top and Verifying DMI Pool way down at the bottom. But then nothing. It just hangs there. As far as I can tell, it will hang there forever (but at the very least an hour). I can't find a solution, and I've been at this for hours. Thank you in advance for any help, or even pointing me in the right direction.

:)

 

boot options wont recognize my usb

I have downloaded windows 10 onto a thumb drive to try to recover a broken system by reinstalling, i plug the thumb drive into a usb port and go to the boot menu to try to find it and boot from it, it does not show up at all on the boot menu. i have tried
unplugging the usb drive and restarting the computer and going back to the boot menu, where all the options are the same as when i had the thumb drive plugged in, showing me that it was not even recognized as being there, please help me.

 

Help installing windows 10 from thumb drive to HP laptop

You don't have to boot from the USB thumb drive. You can boot to the Windows 8.1 desktop.

Connect the USB thumb drive, open thumb drive then click Setup.exe

Learn how:

How
to Upgrade to Windows 10 Creators Update version 1703 and Earlier Versions from Windows 8.0 or Windows 8.1

 

My Vista machine never used to install Windows from USB stick either, so I stuck to burning an ISO to DVD. I assume you want to clean install this time too. If you don't need to access the bit that allows you to add/remove partitions and format the drive before installing Windows, you could try running setup.exe on the thumbdrive from the Vista desktop and follow the on-screen instructions, which should give the option to keep nothing and install Windows.

Alternatively, you can burn a Windows 10 ISO to DVD using the Windows Media Creation Tool (see Option Two at the link below) and then boot from DVD to install Windows 10. Just use the licence key that came with the Windows 10 thumbdrive you bought to activate it.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/9...-download.html

Then:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1...n-install.html

You'll may need to install Windows 8.1 graphics card drivers if there aren't any available for Windows 10 and they don't automatically install through Windows Update.

 

I unfortunately do want partitions. And anyway, running setup doesn't work.

I also don't have a DVD burner, so nix idea 2, as well. Ideally I'd figure out why this stupid thumb drive doesn't work because it seems like it should.

The clean install tutorial doesn't seem particularly helpful, or it could be that I'm not understanding what you want me to see; I'm at Step 3 and cannot get Windows to boot from USB. Currently I'm selecting USB-HDD in BIOS, which seems to be reading my thumbdrive, but then it fails at "Verifying DMI Pool."

 

You did not specify what type of computer you are running does it meet the minimum requirements

 

Yeah, I exceed all the specs by a wide margin. Except for:

• Download and run a handy utility called CPU-Z. Look under Instructions and if you see SSE2, EM64T (indicates the processor has support for PAE) and either VT-d or VT-x

On that, not so much. I'm seeing SSE2, but not the other two things. I'm not sure what this means (yet), but thanks for making me look at the obvious. And thanks for giving me the workarounds, ARC. Any other info?

 

Set it to Lagcy Mode in the BIOS and disable Secure Boot. Also have a look here:

What You Need to Know About Using UEFI Instead of the BIOS

 

Strange that you Windows Thumb drive will not boot. There is a procedure that will allow you to create an ISO on your hard drive from a bootable USB drive. From there you would mount the ISO file and run setup from there.

https://forums.hak5.org/index.php?/t...o/#entry163514

 

Would a computer that is running Vista have UEFI enabled ?

 

I have Vista, and my computer's motherboard is old enough that Vista was the current version of Windows when I got it. As far as I can tell, Secure Boot isn't even an option as that requires UEFI, right? I'm still stuck using BIOS, and, in fact, was unaware of UEFI at all. From my limited knowledge and the reading material I've been given on this forum (thank you, all), it appears that I'm going to need to update the motherboard and probably the processor in order to run Windows 10. Can anyone confirm? Or give me other options if I'm not quite understanding?

 

It's my understanding that UEFI was introduced with Win8/8.1 and some features are for 64-bit only. I've done a number of Upgrades to Win10 but always from Win7 w/SP1 or Win8.1, both 32-bit and 64-bit. I have managed Upgrades on Vista machines but only by going to Win7 w/SP 1 first, haven't needed to do a clean install on a Vista or WinXP drive or a bare drive.

 

UEFI was around at time of VISTA, but the pcs were not generally suitable or capable in those days.

Even if pcs said they were eufi capable, early implementations were rather flakey, and it was often better to stick to a legacy bios install.

I would download the iso (probably best to choose 32 bit) from here

Tech Bench

and then create a new usb installation stick using rufus making sure to select an mbr based installation.

Then make sure bios is set to legacy bios if pc has eufi capability.

Then boot from stick, and install it.