Boot of linux distros work, but from windows dont

Hi, i've a notebook that suddenly crashed and turned on again and got stuck in the automatic repair loop, so i've tired refreshing boot but without much success i've decided doing a factory reset by installing ubuntu and deleting everything on the notebook ssd, but the windows installer, and any other windows iso just wont boot, i've tried building the iso file through different methods (Rufus, Ventoy and Create Media Tool), tried with different usb sticks, with safe boot enabled and disabled, Windows 10, 11 and WinPE, fat32, NTFS, GPT, MBR, etc...
But the weird thing is that all my linux distros work just fine with the exception of the fact that the dedicated graphics card of the notebook seem to not exist, but boots all distros just fine and normal installation.
Already tried reseting BIOS to default settings, and nothing works.

Steps that i took when building the usb bootable device:
1- Downloaded the Windows ISO
2- Opened Rufus (Portable)
3- Built the usb stick with FAT32, UEFI, cluster size 8192
(all from my main desktop computer, in which the pendrive works just fine)
4- Turned on my notebook, and changed the boot priority, booted the usb and got stuck in a loop that doesnt even reach the purple installation screen.
* Identical Issue: Can not boot to any windows product but boots to linux with no issue

I would go into your BIOS and make sure the hard drives are disabled so that they don't get booted from and only the USB drive.

Where did the ISO come from?

Yes I read your details, let's review this:

hungarian said:

Downloaded the Windows ISO
Opened Rufus (Portable)
Built the usb stick with FAT32, UEFI, cluster size 8192
(all from my main desktop computer, in which the pendrive works just fine)
Turned on my notebook, and changed the boot priority, booted the usb and got stuck in a loop that doesnt even reach the purple installation screen.
* Identical Issue: Can not boot to any windows product but boots to linux with no issue

1. Ok, you tried a fresh ISO from official source
2. Tried Rufus and made sure to use Fat32 UEFI and cluster size
4. Changed boot priority
4. Oh... PURPLE installation screen? are you trying to install Windows 10? or Windows 11?, ok, you explained above you tried W100, 11. WinPE, fat32, NTFS, GPT, MBR... ok that's quite a lot.

Can you boot from USB any sort of rescue media? like Macrium Reflect, EASEUS, or AEOMEI? the first one is Windows based, the other two, the more common ones are Linux based, but they also offer a WinPE based. If you can boot you could restore a backup or test your disk. Just saying, backups matter, and if you don't have one, I bet you will back up your disk next time, right?

Ok, you installed Ubuntu, I see you explain you booted the USB and got stuck in a loop, you might want to try a diff USB, or DVD if possible, and even so, you might want to launch SHIFT + F10 and then Diskpart to erase your whole disk as MBR, given that you "booted", right?, or perhaps it's not possible I think, because you didn't reach the purple screen.

Does your notebook comes with a DVD drive? try a Windows DVD then.

What version of Ubuntu? past versions installed using MBR, I recently (this year) installed a few distros and found out GPT is now being used, sometimes this makes things a bit difficult, perhaps try to boot Ubuntu from USB and erase your disk in MBR mode first.

Consider the possibility that you might be dealing with a hard disk failure, or hardware failure:
"Hi, i've a notebook that suddenly crashed and turned on again and got stuck"

If possible, if you have access to another computer, try extracting your disk, mount internally or externally and perform some tests, and perhaps install Windows there. I do this quite often, specially if the target machine is slow or problematic, after a basic install I go back and put the drive on the target computer.

IF your disk is OK, then you might want to try mounting it on another machine and apply the Windows install wim file, then put it back, it will boot directly to the installer, due to space and time I won't post here the guide on how to do it, you can find it on the web. It's basically a diskpart and dism process.

And lastly... I had similar issues with some computers:
- On some, it would only accept a USB 2 stick, and with no hubs
- On some, I had to completely erase the hard drive and leave it on FAT32 MBR first
- Once... for whatever reason the boot order (bios level) got messed up, and it only fixed itself after several attempts, I could explain details but it makes no sense, as suddenly vanished options reappeared on the bios by themselves
- Not sure if you need to reset the TPM on your bios
- On a couple of computers dealing with W10 in specific, the only thing that worked was applying a generic backup I had around directly to the disk

I suspect you have hardware issues, possibly your hard drive? or RAM?

hroldan said:

Yes I read your details, let's review this:

1. Ok, you tried a fresh ISO from official source
2. Tried Rufus and made sure to use Fat32 UEFI and cluster size
4. Changed boot priority
4. Oh... PURPLE installation screen? are you trying to install Windows 10? or Windows 11?, ok, you explained above you tried W100, 11. WinPE, fat32, NTFS, GPT, MBR... ok that's quite a lot.

Can you boot from USB any sort of rescue media? like Macrium Reflect, EASEUS, or AEOMEI? the first one is Windows based, the other two, the more common ones are Linux based, but they also offer a WinPE based. If you can boot you could restore a backup or test your disk. Just saying, backups matter, and if you don't have one, I bet you will back up your disk next time, right?

Ok, you installed Ubuntu, I see you explain you booted the USB and got stuck in a loop, you might want to try a diff USB, or DVD if possible, and even so, you might want to launch SHIFT + F10 and then Diskpart to erase your whole disk as MBR, given that you "booted", right?, or perhaps it's not possible I think, because you didn't reach the purple screen.

Does your notebook comes with a DVD drive? try a Windows DVD then.

What version of Ubuntu? past versions installed using MBR, I recently (this year) installed a few distros and found out GPT is now being used, sometimes this makes things a bit difficult, perhaps try to boot Ubuntu from USB and erase your disk in MBR mode first.

Consider the possibility that you might be dealing with a hard disk failure, or hardware failure:
"Hi, i've a notebook that suddenly crashed and turned on again and got stuck"

If possible, if you have access to another computer, try extracting your disk, mount internally or externally and perform some tests, and perhaps install Windows there. I do this quite often, specially if the target machine is slow or problematic, after a basic install I go back and put the drive on the target computer.

IF your disk is OK, then you might want to try mounting it on another machine and apply the Windows install wim file, then put it back, it will boot directly to the installer, due to space and time I won't post here the guide on how to do it, you can find it on the web. It's basically a diskpart and dism process.

And lastly... I had similar issues with some computers:
- On some, it would only accept a USB 2 stick, and with no hubs
- On some, I had to completely erase the hard drive and leave it on FAT32 MBR first
- Once... for whatever reason the boot order (bios level) got messed up, and it only fixed itself after several attempts, I could explain details but it makes no sense, as suddenly vanished options reappeared on the bios by themselves
- Not sure if you need to reset the TPM on your bios
- On a couple of computers dealing with W10 in specific, the only thing that worked was applying a generic backup I had around directly to the disk

I suspect you have hardware issues, possibly your hard drive? or RAM?

I don't have anything on the disk anymore, formated it through gparted, using the ubuntu usb "test", and i don't have a DVD slot, its a Dell G15 5510.
Ubuntu latest version (LTS), downloaded in the official site, used GPT mode, my motherboards seem to not support MBR, even Gparted i had to run through ubuntu to make it work.

"Consider the possibility that you might be dealing with a hard disk failure, or hardware failure:
"Hi, i've a notebook that suddenly crashed and turned on again and got stuck"

Actually, the crash came later, but it was looping even before, when i turned off normaly and the other day it was like that.

The idea of mounting the ssd on other computer is good, will try;

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F22 Simpilot said:

I would go into your BIOS and make sure the hard drives are disabled so that they don't get booted from and only the USB drive.

Where did the ISO come from?

ISO came from Media Creative Tool, both Win 11 and 10.
Already made sure that the only boot option is the USB drive.

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Berton said:

Problem with Linux-formatted drives is they usually are EXT4 and Windows can't work with that, at least mine are, both installed in a computer and USB Thumb drives. Plugging a drive into a Windows computer pops up a message about it not being formatted.
Linux Mint 21 on 8GB Thumb drive:

There's a way of doing that without removing the ssd and transfering to another computer?

Berton said:

Not following that question.

I was talking about formating the drive in a way that Windows can use, since you said Linux formated drivers are incompatible with the OS.
If you're talking about the USB stick itself, i've already made the bootable usb through media creation tool