Use Macrium Reflect Rescue Media to Fix Windows Boot Issues  

cereberus said:

Hi @Kari - great tutorial. I have just a minor comment for your consideration:

You do not need to disable secure boot to boot into a Macrium usb or dvd - just tested it on my laptop and also in a vm.


Cheers C.

I edited the note, adding the highlighted words:

   Note

On some UEFI based computers booting to Macrium Rescue fails if Secure Boot is enabled. If you can't boot to Macrium Rescue and have Secure Boot enabled, press ESC on Recovery screen to enter UEFI settings and disable Secure Boot.

You can enable it again when boot issues have been fixed.

In my case, with an Asus laptop and a Medion tablet I can't boot them to Macrium Rescue (default Macrium PE created by latest version of Macrium Reflect Free) if and when Secure Boot is enabled.

Both laptop and tablet are running clean installed W10 PRO Build 16199, new rescue media created after installation separately for both (laptop x64, tablet x86).

The same applies to Generation 2 Hyper-V virtual machines, Secure Boot must be disabled in order to be able to boot to Macrium Rescue. Of course with Checkpoints and VM export function there's no need to make system images of Hyper-V virtual machines but as Macrium is the best possible way to fix even the VM boot issues it is good to know how to boot with rescue media if VM does not boot anymore..

Kari

To muddy the waters a bit more, I have to disable Secure Boot and enable Legacy OPROM to get it to boot. This is on an Alienware R6. The BIOS was updated about 2 weeks ago from 1.04 > 1.05. I'm dealing with Alienware (Dell) on this, and they are "working" on it. Maybe I'll just wait for Windows 12.......

@Kari, great tut! Could you explain, please the purpose of steps #1 & #3? You state "Optional", but why would you need them/do them? Thanks. TC

f14tomcat said:

@Kari, great tut! Could you explain, please the purpose of steps #1 & #3? You state "Optional", but why would you need them/do them? Thanks. TC

Sometimes, people have additional boot entries e.g. to boot from a winpe system, or set hypervisor running on auto. These need to be reset manually if not backed up previously.

Kari said:

I edited the note, adding the highlighted words:

   Note

On some UEFI based computers booting to Macrium Rescue fails if Secure Boot is enabled. If you can't boot to Macrium Rescue and have Secure Boot enabled, press ESC on Recovery screen to enter UEFI settings and disable Secure Boot.

You can enable it again when boot issues have been fixed.

In my case, with an Asus laptop and a Medion tablet I can't boot them to Macrium Rescue (default Macrium PE created by latest version of Macrium Reflect Free) if and when Secure Boot is enabled.

Both laptop and tablet are running clean installed W10 PRO Build 16199, new rescue media created after installation separately for both (laptop x64, tablet x86).

The same applies to Generation 2 Hyper-V virtual machines, Secure Boot must be disabled in order to be able to boot to Macrium Rescue. Of course with Checkpoints and VM export function there's no need to make system images of Hyper-V virtual machines but as Macrium is the best possible way to fix even the VM boot issues it is good to know how to boot with rescue media if VM does not boot anymore..

Kari

Good change. Interestingly on my pc, Macrium does boot in Hyper-V even if secure boot is enabled on a gen 2 vm.

I have MR in a partition on ssd, and added a boot entry, and it works perfectly. Go figure ......

Well guys, I knew I wasn't imagining things!

I did a clean install of 15063.0 Home on my laptop and now I can use the Macrium Rescue USB Drive to UEFI boot with secure boot fully enabled.

So, just as I surmised, something has changed and I think it occurred in the next build after 16188 (16193 maybe)?

Now, I don't have a clue what that change could be but I did not do any BIOS updates in the interim. I just kept installing Insider builds.

UPDATE:
The only thing I did notice was a dramatic change in my device driver identifications due to new driver updates becoming available as the builds progressed. I had new devices discovered while others spawned new device driver entries. This happened primarily in the System Devices area. Maybe MS got something wrong but my laptop still ran smoothly.

I did not revert my desktop yet but maybe I will do it as well.

@cereberus: Maybe you didn't experience all this grief because you are still running a non Insider build?

UPDATE:
Just did a clean install of 15063.0 on my desktop running PRO and that (now) also boots just fine using the Macrium Rescue USB Drive to UEFI boot with secure boot fully enabled.

cereberus said:

Sometimes, people have additional boot entries e.g. to boot from a winpe system, or set hypervisor running on auto. These need to be reset manually if not backed up previously.

Ok, thanks. Guess that would also reinstate the custom OS descriptions. Instead of ending up with

Windows 10 (on partition 4)

Windows 10 (on partition 6)

Etc..........

f14tomcat said:

@Kari, great tut! Could you explain, please the purpose of steps #1 & #3? You state "Optional", but why would you need them/do them? Thanks. TC

A really good question deserving a bit more in-depth answer. A short answer is it makes restoring boot menu on a dual / multi boot system a piece of cake, one simple command to restore it as it was instead of manually adding / changing everything.

Let's use my actual boot menu as an example:


The easy way to restore my boot menu when I have been forced to reset boot records with Macrium Reflect is to restore a boot menu backup as told in tutorial (Part 1. to export / backup boot menu, Part 3. to restore it). One command to restore it fully:

In Command Prompt:

bcdedit /import X:\BootMenuBackup

Or in PowerShell:

cmd /c 'bcdedit /import X:\BootMenuBackup'

If I hadn't exported boot menu, I had to restore it manually:

(Click screenshot to enlarge.)

1. Add Windows 10 Education on physical drive W: to boot menu
2. Change its name (as shown in boot menu) to W10 EDU
   
3. Add Windows 10 PRO on a mounted virtual hard disk file (drive I: when mounted) to boot menu
4. Change its name to W10 PRO (VHD)
   
5. Change current OS boot menu entry name to W10 PRO (Hyper-V)
   
6. Copy the current OS boot menu entry to new entry W10 PRO (VMware)
   
7. Disable hypervisor in the copied new entry to allow running VMware on same machine and installation already running Hyper-V
8. Make current OS (my main OS, W10 PRO with hypervisor) default entry in boot menu, the one booted if user selects no OS within given time (by default 30 seconds)
9. Set boot menu display order. To do that I open another PowerShell / Command Prompt to list all boot menu entries with simple bcdedit command to get and copy identifiers of all added operating systems. Last OS added is by default always {default}, current OS you are using is {current}, all other entries are identified with their hexadecimal GUID

Not shown in screenshot: between steps 8. and 9. I launched Macrium Reflect to add Macrium Rescue environment as fifth entry to boot menu.

Notice that in steps 2. and 4. I used the same identifier {default} for two different operating systems when changing entry name. This is possible because by default the last OS added to boot menu gets identifier {default}; adding W:\Windows in step 1. made it default, then adding I:\Windows in step 3. made it default.

Exporting boot menu when it is as you prefer, then importing it with one command when need arises is much faster and easier.

I hope the above answers your question.

Kari

Kari said:

A really good question deserving a bit more in-depth answer. A short answer is it makes restoring boot menu on a dual / multi boot system a piece of cake, one simple command to restore it as it was instead of manually adding / changing everything.

Let's use my actual boot menu as an example:


The easy way to restore my boot menu when I have been forced to reset boot records with Macrium Reflect is to restore a boot menu backup as told in tutorial (Part 1. to export / backup boot menu, Part 3. to restore it). One command to restore it fully:

In Command Prompt:

bcdedit /import X:\BootMenuBackup

Or in PowerShell:

cmd /c 'bcdedit /import X:\BootMenuBackup'

If I hadn't exported boot menu, I had to restore it manually:

(Click screenshot to enlarge.)

1. Add Windows 10 Education on physical drive W: to boot menu
2. Change its name (as shown in boot menu) to W10 EDU
   
3. Add Windows 10 PRO on a mounted virtual hard disk file (drive I: when mounted) to boot menu
4. Change its name to W10 PRO (VHD)
   
5. Change current OS boot menu entry name to W10 PRO (Hyper-V)
   
6. Copy the current OS boot menu entry to new entry W10 PRO (VMware)
   
7. Disable hypervisor in the copied new entry to allow running VMware on same machine and installation already running Hyper-V
8. Make current OS (my main OS, W10 PRO with hypervisor) default entry in boot menu, the one booted if user selects no OS within given time (by default 30 seconds)
9. Set boot menu display order. To do that I open another PowerShell / Command Prompt to list all boot menu entries with simple bcdedit command to get and copy identifiers of all added operating systems. Last OS added is by default always {default}, current OS you are using is {current}, all other entries are identified with their hexadecimal GUID

Not shown in screenshot: between steps 8. and 9. I launched Macrium Reflect to add Macrium Rescue environment as fifth entry to boot menu.

Notice that in steps 2. and 4. I used the same identifier {default} for two different operating systems when changing entry name. This is possible because by default the last OS added to boot menu gets identifier {default}; adding W:\Windows in step 1. made it default, then adding I:\Windows in step 3. made it default.

Exporting boot menu when it is as you prefer, then importing it with one command when need arises is much faster and easier.

I hope the above answers your question.

Kari

Thanks, @Kari! Yes, it does, and very nicely laid out. For me, would save the hassle of the renaming of the OS names. Otherwise, you need a cheat sheet to know what "Windows 10 (on partition 6)" means. :)

Slightly OT....how did you get such a nice pic of your Boot Manager screen without a camera?

my ugly one:

f14tomcat said:

Thanks, @Kari! Yes, it does, and very nicely laid out. For me, would save the hassle of the renaming of the OS names. Otherwise, you need a cheat sheet to know what "Windows 10 (on partition 6)" means. :)

Of course on a single OS system, boot menu is not used nor needed. On dual / multi boot systems it can be restored manually as shown in my last post. I wanted to avoid replies like "You don't have to export and import boot menu, you can do it manually with bcdboot and bcdedit commands or using third party software like EasyBCD".

That's why I marked parts 1. and 3. as Optional; an effort to avoid wise a** replies like that

f14tomcat said:

Slightly OT....how did you get such a nice pic of your Boot Manager screen without a camera?

As always, I cheated :)

There's no way to make screenshots from first phase of Windows installation (before OOBE), or from PC / Windows boot phase. You just have to "cheat" in every post, tutorial and / or video showing Windows setup or boot.

As a Macrium Reflect user, I always have quite recent system images available. With free Macrium viBoot tool (see TenForums viBoot tutorial) I can mount and use any Macrium system image as a Hyper-V virtual machine, allowing me to run an exact copy of my physical Windows installation in Hyper-V.

To get boot menu screenshot, I mounted my most recent system image in viBoot as a virtual machine:


Now I have a 100% identical copy of my laptop running as a VM:


To get screenshot of boot menu, I simply restart the viBoot VM and take screenshot when boot menu is shown:


Cheating is the key to good screenshots

Kari