Windows 10: How to make active@boot disk bootable on uefi/gpt?

Hey Guys

Thank you for the replies. @Hydranix you were correct in stating it was not an Os I was trying to install; their web site does state uefi supported. @genet thank you also for the detailed guide, which I was following anyway.

It seems their support dept gave me incorrect info, v9 was the problem ( no uefi support), v 10.03 works flawlessly.

I appreciate your assistance *Wink

 

Will the USB drive be bootable if all the contents are copied to a folder on the USB drive?

 

Not without configuring the firmware. The standard requires certain files with exact names be in particular places on the partition to be chosen automatically as the default efi application to execute.

Most implementations of UEFI also will not detect external drives as bootable unless a file is in the standard location.

You can configure the firmware manually to know where to find the bootloader. You can even install filesystem drivers and execute bootloaders of non-FAT filesystems if you desire.

In the UEFI shell, the bcfg command can write boot entries to the firmware's NVRAM.
Example:
Code: bcfg boot add 0 "fs1:\directory\application.efi" "Application Description"[/quote]

If you're making a flash drive that will have several different options to boot to, you'll need to use a boot manager in the default location, and preconfigure it to know where to look for the bootloaders.

Some default locations
Code: \bootx64.efi \EFI\bootx64.efi \EFI\boot\bootx64.efi[/quote] And for the shell, if you desire to have one. (always a good idea)
Download for shell:
shellx64.efi v1
Shellx64.efi v2

Clover boot manager modified shellx64.efi for pre-2.3 firmware
link

Default shell location for some firmware's built in "boot shell from filesystem device" menu option:
Code: \shellx64.efi[/quote]

 

I cannot select partition 1, beside which there is an asterisk, so I cannot mark it as active.
See the screenshot below. I don't want to clean it because it already contains files.
Can anyone help?

 

The asterisk to the left of the partition indicates that it is the currently selected partition.

When selecting a volume that is synonymous for a partition, diskpart will also select the partition.

In the context of the image you posted, It appears to me that volume 5, the NTFS formatted volume labeled "USB drive" has a single partition. So selecting volume 5 is the same as selecting partition 1 of the USB drive.

But diskpart is having a problem with the disk it appears, so you should backup any important data on the drive, select the disk, and issue the clean command. This will wipe out the partition information, data will be intact if you accidentally clean the wrong disk, but assume that clean will destroy all data on the disk.

After you use the command clean on the flash drive, you will be able to create a new partition on the drive and access it from diskpart like you are attempting.

Also, if you are attempting to boot this flash drive in UEFI mode, you'll want to use FAT32 as the filesystem, instead of NTFS. NTFS can only work if your BIOS includes an EFI NTFS filesystem driver (I know ASUS and some MSI UEFI implementations include one), or if you manually install an EFI NTFS filesystem driver and configure your firmware to load this driver prior to boot.

The following are some details about windows' treatment of partitions on usb flash drives that aren't relevant to your current post, but most likely will arise in the future for you.

Windows is limited on the way it treats usb flash drives, it only allows a single partition (the first) to be accessible at a time. Other operating systems treat flash drives exactly like any other disk and allows partition-tables, multiple partitions, or partition less full disk filesystems. There are workarounds for this, but shortof a microcontroller firmware reconfiguration of the flash drive, window's will only allow one partition be mounted (assigned a drive letter) on flash drives.

 

On Disk Management, the USB drive partition is not active.
On MiniTool Partition Wizard, it is shown as active.
Actually, is it bootable or not? See the screenshots below.





The following is MiniTool Partition Wizard.

 

If the Bootable flag is set for that partition in the mbr partition table entry for the partition, a proper bios will look for and attempt to execute the boot code at the beginning of that partition, So yes it should be bootable if the above is true.

However, since Windows Disk Manager and Diskpart.exe are not detecting the partition as active, I would have to assume there is something wrong with the partition table of the flash drive (ie it is ill-formed)

Have you tried actually booting the flash drive? If it fails to boot I suggest wiping the flash drive, and writing a new partition table and partition entry, and then formatting a fresh filesystem to it.

Partition Wizard has an option to repair the MBR. You can also try that.

 

FAT32 applies to both UEFI BIOS and Legacy BIOS, right?

No. I want to use it to clean install Redstone 2 later.

 

Yes, that is correct. By using FAT32, you can boot in either Legacy mode, or UEFI mode if supported, and the flash drive contains both UEFI and Legacy boot files.

Then I would suggest backing up the data on the drive and doing a full wipe to avoid any problems.

After the data has been backed up
Code: diskpart sel dis # cle all cre par pri format fs=fat32 quick act ass letter=s exit bootsect /nt60 S: /force bootsect /nt60 S: /force /mbr[/quote] copy over data and everything should work as expected

 

The above does not exist in post #7, so I did not run them. Why are they needed?
Before you wrote post #22, I had already done the following.
Is the USB drive bootable now?

 

But there`s no iso file on it, is there ?

I still don`t understand what people are trying to do here, are you trying to make a bootable usb to run windows 10 off of ?

Or are you trying to make a bootable usb to install windows 10 off of ?

 

I want to make a bootable USB drive to clean install the upcoming version of Windows 10.

 

This threads was originally concerning a UEFI-mode bootable flash drive. So I answered you under the assumption that you wanted to make a flash drive UEFI bootable.

Then you said:

So I added the extra bootsect commands which make the drive Legacy-mode bootable. So that you would have a flash drive which can do both.

I originally omitted the Legacy-mode steps because I've had many experiences of people mistakenly installing Windows on modern hardware in Legacy mode, and using the CSM (which slows down the boot process and places limitations on the OS to some degree) rather than in UEFI-mode, and since the IBM PC BIOS (aka Legacy BIOS) is entirely deprecated, I assume UEFI is what people want by default.

In UEFI-mode it will boot if the contents of the Windows 10 ISO, not the ISO file itself, but what it contains, are copied to the flash drive.

If you want to also have the option to Legacy boot the flash (not recommended unless you know you need it to be) you will have to run the bootsect command to write the Legacy boot code to the flash drive. Of course the ISO contents will need to be copied to the flash drive as well, like I said above.


I hope I wasn't unclear, sorry if I over explain things a bit.

 

No bootsect commands are needed in the method described in post #7, which applies to both UEFI and Legacy mode. Why are bootsect commands needed in my case?

I use an MBR disk, so I have to use the Legacy mode, but I might go over to GPT in the future.

 

the bootsect commands are unnecessary if not using Legacy mode. However, in your case, since you're using MBR partition table, and do not at this time want to move to a GPT, you'll need to use the bootsect commands on the flash drive.

I'd strongly advise, if your motherboard firmware is UEFI capable, to use a GPT formatted hard drive, and installing windows in UEFI mode, and disabling Legacy Emulation in your firmware (aka the Compatibility Support Module).