New
#1
UEFI booting
I created two UEFI bootable USB drives:
USB stick 1.) using windows 10 "create recovery drive" - on a 32GB usb 3.0 drive
USB stick 2.) using EASE US backup/restore software - on a 4GB usb 2.0 drive
Both sticks appear to be UEFI. When I put them in my windows 10 desktop machine, they both show up in the boot menu as "UEFI:" followed by the usb stick brand name. Stick 2 also shows up a 2nd time in the boot menu, with the brand name but without the "UEFI" in front. When I select Stick 1 from the boot menu, the desktop machine boots, asks for the keyboard type and continues to the recovery program. However the desktop will not boot to Stick 2 using either of its boot menu choices.
Then I tried them in my Lenovo Yoga 2pro laptop (now with windows 10). The only way to get the boot menu on this device is to power down and hit the small button on the side. Stick 2 appears in the boot menu, and when I select it the EASE US backup software starts. Stick 1 is a different story however. I can boot to it by selecting "Advanced startup" under Settings, Recovery and then it boots and behaves like it did on my desktop machine. However it does not show up at all in the boot menu, and thus there would be no way to boot to it if windows was broken. (Kind of defeats the purpose of the USB stick!). I also tried this on a second Yoga 2 pro that I have and the results were the same. (I've already disabled the "secure boot" option in the BIOS.)
I'm wondering if there is more than one UEFI type that would explain the different behaviors? I tried to ask a Lenovo customer support agent about this but he didn't seem to know much about this topic and his response was not helpful. Perhaps this is just a Lenovo problem, but in case it is more general, I thought I would ask here first.
Thanks.
~Paul