Secure Boot and Windows 10 Installation

ArazelEternal · 04 Apr 2017

alphanumeric said:

Legacy or UEFI installs? NTFS is fine for Legacy installs, but a lot of PC's won't let you install in UEFI mode if its formatted in NTFS. My Wife's ACER laptop for one.

UEFI installs. Im not sure whats different about my systems. They are both listed in my specs, but both boot and install fine from a NTFS drive.

NavyLCDR said:

Most UEFI computers will not boot from an NTFS formatted flash drive so it's bad advice to recommend created a flash drive that way when a FAT32 formatted flash drive will boot in both UEFI and legacy BIOS computers.

I was just stating there are cases where it does work. Of course one should always go with the method that is more likely to work. This is just simply what I have found.

Superfly · 04 Apr 2017

Rufus is a bit of a conundrum... technically it's quite cool in the way it allows a FAT32 boot with Linux ntfs driver to launch setup from a 2nd partition on the USB for files larger than 4GB.. the alternative would be to .swm the installation files with dism...(ala OEM recovery) ..Navy's suggesion is fool-proof IMHO tho'

I'm not sure why secure boot's complaining - others here are more versed in those aspects...

Setting your MAK or GVLK key in the pid.txt as alpha explained will get Pro installed and activated... online for the former or with KMS once network access has been established in the latter.

rsieja · 05 May 2020

NavyLCDR said:

The USB flash drive must be FAT32, not NTFS. That's why I recommend that no one use RUFUS to create it. A very large percentage of people who state that their flash drives won't boot is because RUFUS has too many out of order settings that don't make any sense.

Since you must already have the ISO file to use with RUFUS, this is how you reliably make a bootable USB flash drive from it:

With Windows running, insert the flash drive.
Open a Command Prompt (Admin) or Command Prompt as Administrator.
Run the following commands in the elevated Command Prompt:
diskpart
list disk
select disk # <make sure to place the number of the USB flash drive in place of #! Make sure it is correct!
clean <this will erase the selected disk. Make sure it is the USB flash drive!
create part pri
format fs=fat32 quick
active
exit
exit

Now mount the ISO file. Windows 8/8.1/10 will mount the ISO file from Windows Explorer. Windows 7 requires a program like WinCDEmu to mount ISO files.

Copy all the files and folders from the mounted ISO file to the USB flash drive. You now have a Windows 10 USB flash drive that will boot under legacy BIOS, UEFI firmware, and secure boot.

Just registered myself here to say it worked! Thank you.