In your link the response to the bios settings, csm and legacy BIOS, these are settings "from the past". If your new system is recent and supports Windows 11 you must disable csm and legacy BIOS in the bios.
With rufus during the preparation of the installation media you can choose mbr (csm legacy bios) or gpt uefi, the current standard.
I don't remember if the most recent version of Rufus still support MBR but I chose GPT and I'm surprised that manufacturers sell advanced and expensive UEFI enabled motherboards but we still have to fiddle with the BIOS settings in order to make a USB external drive load during a setup!
I don't undestand why people use Rufus to create a Win 10 USB installation drive.
Siplest way is to use MCT
If for any reason you already have a Win 10 installation iso, use diskpart to prepare the USB drive.
diskpart
list disk (it will list all drives. Identify the USB drive number)
select disk n (replace n by the USB drive number obtained with list disk)
clean
convert mbr
create part primary
select part 1
format fs=fat32 quick
assign
active
exit (to exit diskpart)
On Win 10, mount the iso file and copy all files and folders to the USB drive.
It will boot as Legacy or UEFI.
That method (the diskpart commands you have outlined) will no longer work if you use an ISO image with an install.wim. I am looking at the December 2023 release of Windows 10 right now and the install.wim file is 4.89GB, and that is without having made any modifications to it. 4.89GB equals no bueno for FAT32.
Bear in mind that if you are doing any manipulation of the images, you MUST use the version with an install.wim rather than install.esd. Yes, you can convert from .wim to .esd or split the image into smaller parts, but I like to use a consistent process that works for every image, every time.
If you're have a pure Sources\install.wim bigger than 4G and if you want to make a UEFI USB boot able drive you have two options:
Right click the Win 10 iso and choose mount. From the virtual disk created, copy all files and folders to a temporary folder.
Option 1) Split \Sources\install.wim into smaller Install.swm
Open a CMD window on the Sources\install.wim on the temporary folder (Shift+rightclick inside the folder + Open command window here)
run the command
Dism /Split-Image /ImageFile:install.wim /SWMFile:install.swm /FileSize:3600
It will create two install.swm. Delete Sources\Install.wim on the temporary folder.
Copy all files and folders from the temporary folder to the Fat32 partition on the USB drive.
Option 2) Create two partitions on the USB drive.
- One Fat32 - 1G set as active
- One NTFS = 7G
Open a CMD window as administrator and type:
diskpart
list disk (it will list all drives. Identify the USB drive number)
select disk n (replace n by the USB drive number obtained with list disk)
clean
convert mbr
create part primary size=1000
select part 1
format fs=fat32 quick
assign
active
create part primary
select part 2
format fs=ntfs quick
assign
exit (to exit diskpart)
Copy all files and folders from the temporary folder to the Fat32 partition EXCEPT the /Sources folder
Copy the /Sources from the temporary folder to the NTFS partition
Create on the Fat32 partition a /Sources folder. Move the Boot.wim from the NTFS partition /Sources folder to the Fat32 partition /Sources folder
Option 1 or Option 2 allow you to boot the USB as Legacy or UEFI to install as Legacy-MBR or UEFI-GPT
Last edited by Megahertz; 09 Jan 2024 at 21:50.
Agreed. I use what you list as option 2. In fact, that is the ONLY method I will ever use for creating my Windows media.
LOL, the opposite is also a problem. I have an open case with a competitor to Macrium Reflect because of an issue related to this. Their recovery media software refuses to scale properly on high DPI screens. The easy workaround used to be to enable CSM (Compatibility Support Module) in the BIOS. I warned them as soon as Win 11 requirements were announced that manufacturers would phase out CSM so they better fix it. Sure enough, there are a lot of computers now that have no CSM - they are 100% pure UEFI and they still have not fixed it.
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