Windows 10: Can I make a single UEFI & BIOS bootable USB?

I have been trying to create a multipurpose bootable USB for myself, I am trying to get to to have a windows installer and a live linux distro with persistence on one usb.
but i have been having trouble trying to find a bootloader that can boot both from the same usb in efi mode. but that aside I would like to have a uefi/bios bootable usb working but it seems to be one of the other, if I install UEFI mode some older computers cant read it and vice versa. I still come across a couple of old BIOS computers that i need to reinstall and i would like to have it all on one usb if possible. Can i achieve this?

:)

 

Can't reinstall Windows 10 from a USB stick

Hi Andrew, do you have legacy BIOS or UEFI BIOS?

If you have UEFI ,make the following changes:

Insert the Bootable Installation Media, then go into your BIOS and make the following changes:

1. Disable Secure Boot

2. Enable Legacy Boot

3. If Available enable CSM

4. If Required enable USB Boot

5. Move the device with the bootable disc to the top of the boot order

6. Save BIOS changes, restart your System and it should boot from the Installation Media

 

Windows 10 Stuck in repair

Is this a UEFI BIOS? Are you booting the media as a UEFI device?

How was the media created exactly? Can you try creating a bootable DVD to compare, or another flash stick?

Go into UEFI or BIOS Setup and reset to Defaults. Then try booting the media again.

 

You want to put an EFI bootloader on the USB? I'd use The rEFInd Boot Manager: Installing rEFInd

You could create 3 partitions on the USB (in Linux, Windows won't let you make more than one partition on removable media), put the Windows install media on the first (formatted FAT32 so it will work for EFI and BIOS), put rEFInd on the second (FAT partition) and Linux on the 3rd. If you boot BIOS computer it will only see the first partition. If you boot from UEFI you can boot rEFInd boot manager and decide whether to boot the Windows installer or Linux.

Is that what you are after?

 

I use diskpart to create my Windows 10 install thumb drives. They are bootable with UEFI and legacy BIOS.

select disk #
clean
create partition primary
format fs=fat32 quick
active
assign
exit

 

He wants to put Linux on the same USB if you look at the first sentence of his question.

 

Yes I saw that, but he also asked about having it boot from both Legacy and UEFI. I'm just saying it is possible, with Windows anyway. I have very limited experience with Linux, I only run it on my raspberry Pi. With the PI, you just image a Micro SD card to install and run it.

 

You might want to check out YUMI. There's a BETA version, near the bottom of the page, that is said to be able to do some limited UEFI booting. I'm not sure if it can do both or if you'll run into the same issue - one or the other. However, it's worth a look/read in any case.