Clean Install Windows 10  

desertdad said:

Surprise: Boot blew right by the Win10 install USB drive and booted normally. USB drive in one of the front USB3 ports. Doing a clean install on a Dell XPS 8700 desktop. Using a RUFUS-built drive. Using F2 at boot. F2 option showing when I selected it. Secure Boot definitely off. USB definitely first device for boot.
I had already confirmed the ISO had the Win10 Pro at Index 6. I checked that the USB drive was bootable by trying F12 and Dell didn't have any problems booting to the drive. Drive 0 was the only powered up drive.
I ended up ok after some unnatural acts and am running fine, but now I'm paranoid about following all the rules and not having things go well. I'm about to do the same thing to my wife's XPS 8700 and that's always risky.
Any tips on what else I can check before pulling the trigger? What did I forget? Something as obscure as using a particular brand of USB drive?
TIA for any insight.
Dick

Hello Dick,

Sorry, you had trouble booting from the USB.

In addition to checking your UEFI/BIOS settings to make sure it's set to allow USB at boot, you might see if you may be able to use another available option in the tutorial below to boot from the USB.

Boot from USB Drive on Windows 10 PC

desertdad said:

Update: I checked my BIOS settings on my 1909 XPS 8700. I had already set Secure Boot to Enabled. I confirmed I still had USB set before Boot Manager. I booted with the new SanDisk stick. I have to admit I didn't think the boot would work with Secure Boot enabled. The machine booted right into the first window of the clean install. Naturally I immediately killed it.
I'm beginning to think there was something not right about the first boot USB drive. I'm comfortable I can use the process I was using to do the clean install on the next machine.
I'm going to use HeiDoc to get something prior to the MCT 2004 download. I just don't want to deal with 2004 yet. I will still have to go back to 18362.418 and do a bunch of updates, but I think that is better than having my wife jump right into 2004. I sure wish there was something later.
I'm still a little puzzled by the Secure Boot behavior, but I'll go ahead and disable it for the next build.
Be Safe

Some motherboards may allow to still boot from a USB with secure boot enabled, but many do not.

Because of this, it's usually recommended to temporarily disable secure boot as a precaution.

Brink said:

Hello Matt,

It's usually recommended to disable Secure Boot first to be able to boot from the Windows 10 installation USB. Some motherboards may not support booting from a USB flash drive while Secure Boot is enabled. Once the clean install has finished, you can enable Secure Boot.

If your motherboard supports booting from a USB with Secure Boot enabled, then you can leave it enabled if you like when doing a clean install. If you're using official Windows 10 installation media, I'm not sure if there will be any security advantage other than what Secure Boot is designed for.

Hi Brink,

I've reinstalled Win 10 2004 and I could boot the flash drive with Win 10 installation media and secure boot enabled on my machine. I guess this will dependent on your machine/BIOS. I don't know if there is actually any security benefit to installing Windows with secure boot enabled.