Windows 8 consumer preview wont boot from USB Thubmdrive

Hi Friends,

I am trying to install Windows 8 Consumer Preview 64bit in a USB thumbdrive but unable to boot after many attempts. I followed below steps from my win 7(64bit).

1. Format USB drive
diskpart
select disk 1
select partition 1
delete partition
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
active
exit

2. Install win 8 to USB using imagex.exe (its 64bit version from win AIK)
imagex.exe /apply g:\sources\install.wim 1 f:\
- 'g' is my virtual drive where i loaded the win 8 preview 64bit iso and 'f' is my USB thumbdrive.

3. BCDBOOT
After above steps since I am doing from win 7 bcdboot wont work with the /f option. I tried without /f option in win7 but USB does not boot properly.

So here is what I did:

a. Created a virtual machine in vmware player
b. mapped the win 8 consumer preview iso to CD drive
c. connected my usb thumb drive to the virtual machine
d. booted the virtual machine and selected repair option and then command prompt.
e. from there i was able to read my pendrive as drive c.
f. I ran bcdboot from windows/system32 of my usb drive
bcdboot c:/windows /s c: /f ALL

BCDBOOT cmd went ok but when I boot using my USB stick it says windows have problems booting or INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

Please advise whats going wrong... also in my BIOS I have an option to enable UEFI - I tried both enable disable but still no luck in booting.

Please advise.

Hello Suhasingale, and welcome to Eight Forums.

You might see if the tutorial below may be able to help with this.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/5349-windows-8-go-setup-usb-flash-drive-usb-disk.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Hi there
It WILL work fine -- just ensure the BCDBOOT command is run from the W8 folders not from the the W7 folders.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo, the Win7 BCD works too, but it is slower. I ran it with both from USB3 stick and disk. But I then 'upgraded' to the Win8 BCD.

whs said:

jimbo, the Win7 BCD works too, but it is slower. I ran it with both from USB3 stick and disk. But I then 'upgraded' to the Win8 BCD.

Click to expand...

Hi there
I had trouble with the BCDBOOT parameters from W7 when running this lot from a W7 system.

I did the whole lot from a W8 system (although I used the Imagex program from VISTA's (believe it or not) WAIK).

Incidentally in theory then this should work to create a Bootable Window 7 to go -- tried this and it doesn't work !! so there is something in W8 that allows 8 to run from an external device but not W7.

BTW after "Repairing" the USB via "Repair" I think you will have lost the BCDBOOT because repair will revert it to "Normal" Windows operation with the standard boot mechanism.

Try running the BCDBOOT command again (and of course the partition on the USB drive must be set ACTIVE.

Another little caveat -- using the Windows repair option you are likely to get the 100 MB system partition which will hose up your Windows to Go system. Your step D was probably the problem.

Cheers
jimbo