Problem booting from Win 10 USB Flash Drive made per tutorial

highstream · 01 Feb 2017

I used the "How to Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10" tutorial with the Rufus method to make a USB drive that could be used for repairing Win 10 1607 as needed. The problem is that the computer didn't recognize it. My system drive is GPT/UEFI/NTFS and so that's the what I used, along with a recent Win 10 ISO image. In BIOS, I set the first boot option to the USB UEFI drive, saved and the system rebooted. The USB drive's light went on for a moment and that was the end of it; startup went straight through to Windows start up (which hung). The board is an ASRock Z97 Xtreme6 and the BIOS is up to date (2.70). OTOH, a Windows Repair CD starts up fine. What am I missing? Thanks,

Brink · 01 Feb 2017

Hello highstream, :)

You wouldn't want to set the USB as the first item in the boot priority list. Instead, you should leave the Windows boot drive set first. This is because with the USB set first, the system will try to boot from the USB again after a restart instead of continuing with Windows Setup.

You might set that back, and see if using the method below to boot from the USB may work better.

USB Drive - Boot from in Windows 10

In addition, did you use the exact settings in the tutorial for your UEFI Windows with Rufus?

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...html#option2s6

highstream · 01 Feb 2017

I don't think the boot order would matter because after repair I always reset the boot order when it restarts.

The only differences in my Rufus setup and yours other than a larger default cluster size was formatting with NTFS instead of FAT32. Is that crucial?

Btw, why or how would I end up with three mentions of Windows Boot Manager in the BIOS Boot list (started in Win 8.1 I think)? Only one seems to work without fail, one most of the time and one I've never tried.

Brink · 01 Feb 2017

Yeah, you'll want it to be FAT32 to be able to boot a USB from a UEFI installation.

NavyLCDR · 01 Feb 2017

Another victim of Rufus and it's too complicated settings. I don't recommend anybody use Rufus to create a Windows 10 USB flash drive.

Prepare the flash drive as follows:
Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive

At step 9, make sure to use fat32 as stated in the "important" box:
9. To format the partition, type format fs=fat32 quick, and then click ENTER

For step 12, mount the Windows ISO file you downloaded and copy all the files and folders from the mounted ISO file to the USB flash drive and you're done. You have a flash drive that will boot both legacy BIOS and UEFI.

spunk · 01 Feb 2017

Rufus is very easy to use and not complicated at all. You do have to make one change in Rufus if you are booting into a UEFI Bios, under Partition Scheme, Select GPT rather then the default MBR, other then that it goes very easily. Go to Option #2 in this link https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...a.html#option2 to see how
Then with the USB Flash drive in the troubled computer, boot into the Bios, go to the Security tab, Disable SafeBoot or change it to Setup Mode, Save and Exit. Go to the Boot tab, under the Hard Drive Group your USB flash drive should be located, or it may just be USB Device, move this to First Boot Device. Save and Exit. When you reboot the computer with the Flash Drive in, you should see the message, Press Any Key to Boot From USB.