Windows 10: What am I doing wrong in trying to boot via USB?

I have a Lenovo Yoga 3 ultrabook, it's just over a year old. I have made a bootable Windows 8.1 USB flash drive. My aim is to dual boot it with Windows 10. However, I'm not having any luck booting from it. I have read several websites regarding booting & setting a priority in BIOS for the USB device. I went into BIOS & in the 'Boot' section all the 4 items are 'Enabled', does this mean I don't have to move the USB to the top position. I had trouble initially upgrading to W.10, (a lot of default apps were missing.) I worked with 3 individuals at Microsoft & they did several tests remotely but all were unsuccessful, in the end the last person re-installed W.10 via a USB flash drive. But in the process they fouled up my option to revert back to W.8.1. That is why I made a bootable W8.1 USB flash drive. Thanks for any advice.

:)

 

What am I doing wrong in Active Sync?

Did you run Outlook after installation? If not, do that and connect again.

 

What am I doing wrong in Active Sync?

I have a Treo 700wx and I can connect to ActiveSync. I don't have Microsoft Office on my laptop, but did download Outlook 2007 stand alone. Why won't AS recognize my contacts, tasks and calendar? And I don't see where my programs from my Treo are saved
anywhere. I guess I'm expecting to see something like my files that generate when I sync'd my Palm 650. I'm still trying to get used to WM and still haven't gotten the knack of it completely.

 

Start the computer, press F2 and Boot into Setup (Bios) go to the Security tab, look for Secure Boot, if it is enabled, disable it, or change it to Setup Mode. Go to the Boot Tab, if it is set to UEFI Bios, change it to Legacy Boot. With the USB Flash drive in you should see it in either Hard Drive Group or just USB Device, Move this to First Boot Device. Save and Exit. You can also restart the computer and press F12 after making the other changes for a one time change of boot order.
When you restart with the USB in, you should see the message Press Any Key To Boot From USB. If not, it is not first boot device, it is not changed to Legacy Boot, or the USB flash drive was not correctly created and is not bootable. Try it on another computer to test.

 

You do NOT want to do that unless you are intentionally doing a Legacy install. If your doing a UEFI install you want Secure Boot enabled.

 

The order of the devices is important. It will go through those devices and boot to the first one it finds that is bootable. Put the thumb drive as the first device. Just remember to unplug it, or switch the hard drive back to the first device on the first reboot during setup. If your BIOS has a quick boot option use that. By quick boot I mean the one time menu were you can select a boot device for that one boot up. On the next boot up it goes back to the defaults. It's great for doing installs as you don't have to change things twice. If you are wanting to do a UEFI install, you'll likely want your thumb drive formatted in fat32. Some PC's will not do a UEFI install if the thumb drive is formatted in NTFS.
I use option 2 here, http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...e-windows.html. Created that way it will work for Legacy and UEFI. Works for Windows 7, 8 and 10.

 

A few questions. First, what did you use to create your "Bootable" Windows 8.1 USB drive? Where did you get the 8.1 ISO from? Are you sure you 8.1 device was windows 10 compatible for the windows 10 upgrade. (Just because you have a qualifying OS to upgrade from doesn't mean your hardware is or that the manufacturer has driver support for windows 10).

 

Thanks a lot everybody.
To answer your question Plankton, I downloaded the W.8.1 ISO from the MS Windows site where you can select: W.7, 8.1 or 10.
I decided to use Brink's tutorial published on Sept. 8, 2015, titled: "How to boot from a USB flash drive in Windows 10".
I inserted the Windows 8.1 bootable USB. In the BIOS boot menu I disabled the 'Fast Boot', as he suggested & under 'EFI', I moved the 'EFI USB device (Generic USB Storage') above 'Windows Boot Manager'. I couldn't see any way to alter the arrangement of the following order:
Boot mode [Enabled]
Fast boot {Disabled]
USB boot [Enabled]
PXE Boot to LAN [Enabled]
PXE IPV4 First [Enabled]

EFI
EFI USB Device (Generic USB Storage
Windows Boot Manager

After I exited the BIOS the PC restarted & a VERY small dialog box opened titled: "Windows 8 Setup" for setting up language etc. However, I could not get the 'Next' button to operate. I have a touch screen, but that shouldn't make any difference, should it! I had to use a magnifying glass to read the text. Why was that dialog box so small, & why wouldn't the 'Next' button perform? Again, what am I doing wrong?

 

Try the keyboard Enter key to do the Next if the touchscreen isn't working.

 

Thanks for that alphanumeric.
The problem is that something is wrong, first the dialog box shouldn't be this size, second, even it does work I wouldn't be able to fill in all the necessary information with the boxes being so small. I need to know what has gone wrong!

 

Hi,
To change the boot order, you need to press Fn+F6 in BIOS after selecting the drive.
EDIT: I could see that you have already changed the boot order, ignore my post.

 

Sounds like it glitched on the screen resolution. Way to high for some reason. Usually its the other way around, low resolution with large text. I'd have a second go to see if it was a one time thing.

 

It does sound like it is trying to use 4K or some other high Res.....

Plug in a usb keyboard and mouse if possible , I have read about other issue in WinPe etc where the proper drivers are not loaded lately.

 

I decided to install W.8.1 from the File Explorer: I inserted my W.8.1 bootable flash drive, selected 'Sources'>'Setup.exe', (which I understand is different than selecting it from the root folder.) Anyway, the W.8.1 setup box opened, but just as before in miniature. The main difference was that I was able to continue past the updates phase, (with difficulty, & with a magnifying glass) & than came to the box with the choice to select the 'Custom install', which is what I've been looking for. At that point I decided to discontinue & try to resolve the issue of the box sizes first. When I receive some new flash drives I'll do another download of the Windows media tool. If anybody else has any suggestions on this matter I would appreciate them. Thanks guys for all your advice up to now!!
PS My screen display settings are: 3200 x 1600.

 

I have a retina MacBook Pro (which I have partitioned GPT using an EFI bootloader).

When I try to install Windows and accidentally pick the old BIOS based installer I get the miniscule boxes (and then it eventually says can't install to this drive). If I install EFI loader then it is all fine. This sounds similar to your issue.

You may want to check (or remake) your USB key. There is a tutorial here using Rufus which is pretty reliable. USB Flash Drive - Create to Install Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums