Usb boot issue

anaron · 24 Oct 2016

Succeeded in getting Win 10 to boot to my usb hard drives after weeks of banging my head against the wall but now it does work. Have now hit another issue with booting to usb. The weekend, I installed a game for one of my Grandsons, Special Ops The Line. Game worked great and he had a blast. Well today I backup the primary drive to the Lacie usb3 ssd. Booted to the Lacie to make sure it worked which it did not! Backed up my backup internal drive to the Lacie which did not have Special Ops The Line installed and the Lacie booted. I uninstalled the game but the Lacie would still not boot. I restored the primary drive with the primary backup, backed up the Lacie and it booted. Took it another round and installed the game which again killed the booting to usb. So, apparently the game is causing the issue but I have no idea as to what to look for as this appears to be the only issue the game causes my computer. Any idea as to what to look at?

dalchina · 25 Oct 2016

Hi,It's great you're doing backups, but I'm puzzled I'm afraid- why are you trying to or wanting to boot from a backup drive?
How are you creating the backup?

We recommend disk imaging which supports updates, and so allows you to restore your disks/partitions/files from images created at different dates. Macrium Reflect (free/commercial) is found to be reliable - very well supported and maintained.

anaron · 25 Oct 2016

I use Casper 10 to clone the os drive to a second internal drive and also to a usb3 external drive. Years ago, I did not us an external drive for backups and lightning go my entire computer system which took days to completely rebuild. I first used Casper in 2003 to remedy this issue as my computers are and must be available 24 hours a day at a moments notice. If the primary os drive crashes for whatever reason, I can immediately boot tthe internal backup or the external backup and be back in operation is a couple minutes. Also keep a bootable backup off premises. Unfortunately, Windows 10 has created more issues and more crashes for me than any other operating system I have ever used since my days of punch cards, peg boards and magnetic tapes where humans was the os. Casper backups have saved my butt many, many times.

I do not see imaging as a viable benefit for me. Got to have a system image, a history of images of various dates and a recovery disk to bot a non-bootable hard drive before you can restore the image which may just be corrupted. Go back to an image that is not corrupted which just may be many many images back and restore the hard drive losing everything between the day you crashed and the day of a good image. What if your hd goes bad? You must then install the os before you can image the drive. I only need to plug one of my bootable hard drives into the usb port, boot computer to boot menu, select usb hard drive and I am up and running. I can then operate off the usb drive and later copy the usb drive to the internal drive.

dalchina · 25 Oct 2016

I guess I've been more fortunate with '10 than some.. although yesterday I started the day with an unbootable PC for no attributable reason and had to run
bootrec /rebuildbcd

Weird- nothing else wrong that I can see- but that's not a new issue in Win 10.

I agree- had fewer issues with Intel MDS's running on 8086's - or a paper tape system with a Motorola up.

Do you get any sort of error message when the PC fails to boot?

anaron · 25 Oct 2016

Sorry dalchina, dditing my other post while you were posting your question
Yes, inaccessible boot device.

anaron · 25 Oct 2016

Just connected the usb drive to my win7 laptop and it booted with no problem.

anaron · 25 Oct 2016

Know without a doubt the issue is caused by the Special Ops The Line install. Just do not know as to the specific reason for this issue. In looking for a solution, I found instructions to move the Steam and all game installs to another drive. Moved them to my data drive D: and bingo, problem solved. Granted this is a workaround and does not tell me what actually caused the issue but I will keep playing with it to find out why. dalchina, I appreciate your time and input. Should you come up with any idea as to what caused this definitely let me know. Gotta love this site! Don't know where I would be without Brink and and everyone on here. Joined the SevenForums in Sept 2010. Brink and his posse made my transition from XP to Win7 the best and easiest transition I have ever made and now TenForums is doing the same thing. Changes at my age do not come easy!!!! Thank all of you!

dalchina · 26 Oct 2016

anaron said:

Know without a doubt the issue is caused by the Special Ops The Line install. Just do not know as to the specific reason for this issue. In looking for a solution, I found instructions to move the Steam and all game installs to another drive. Moved them to my data drive D: and bingo, problem solved.

Good decision. Clearly sthg low level is affected.. but sometimes it's best to sidestep it if not vital.