UEFI Bootable USB Flash Drive - Create in Windows

polaklbn · Dec 2, 2013

Oh my ... I can't do anything. I give up...

When i Want to install W7 without UEFI -

1. Should I delete all volumes from my disk using diskpart, and then use "convert mbr" command

?
2. Have I switch off UEFI in bios using "legacy BIOS" option?
3. Can I using a standard bootable usb without changes ?

theog · Dec 2, 2013

polaklbn said:
Oh my ... I can't do anything. I give up...

When i Want to install W7 without UEFI -

1. Should I delete all volumes from my disk using diskpart, and then use "convert mbr" command ?
2. Have I switch off UEFI in bios using "legacy BIOS" option?
3. Can I using a standard bootable usb without changes ?

I am very embarrassed because i don't know what can i do more, for finally install Windows 7 in my new Acer Aspire V3-571G.

Downgrade to Windows 7.
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/13326-downgrade-windows-8-windows-7-a.html
Warning you must have the UEFI/BIOS firmware setting in Step Three set.

Make sure you read the NOTE at Step three.

As you have a ACER, you need to install in LEGACY mode.

On some Acer, Gateway, P. Bell, Windows 7 x64 will not install in UEFI mode.

Windows 8 Desktops - How to Disable Secure Boot - YouTube

Enabling the boot device menu

Acer said:
On most Acer systems, you can use the F12 key on boot to select the drive or network from which loading the operating system. In case the F12 option does not work, you may need to enable this function.

SOLUTION

Enabling the F12 function:

1.Power on the system. As soon as the first logo screen appears, immediately press the F2 key, or the DEL key if you have a desktop, to enter the BIOS.
2.Press the right arrow key to select Main.
3.Use the arrow keys to navigate to F12 Boot Menu, and press ENTER.
4.Select Enabled, and press ENTER.
5.Press the F10 key to save changes and restart the system.

How to Enable or Disable Secure Boot

Acer said:
This article only applies to: Windows 8 Desktops

Bootable media from previous versions of Windows may not be recognized in Windows 8. You can change the Secure Boot setting and it should recognize the bootable device.

Use the following steps to change Secure Boot:

1.Completely shut down your computer.
2.Power on the system. As soon as the first logo screen appears, immediately press Delete to enter the BIOS.
3.Use the right arrow key to select Authentication.
4.With Secure Boot highlighted, press Enter and then the down arrow to select Disabled.
5.Use the right arrow key to select Boot Options.
6.With Launch CSM highlighted, press Enter and use the down arrow to select Always.
7.Press Enter.
8.Press the F10 key to save changes and restart the system

ACER Related Videos.

Windows 8 - Access to Uefi Firmware Settings - Option - YouTube
Iconia W700 - How to Enter the BIOS - YouTube
Windows 8 Desktops - How to Disable Secure Boot - YouTube

krl01 · Dec 4, 2013

May I add files to a uefi bootable usb flash drive ?

First of all thank you very much for your precious help, I feel more confident with Windows after having found your invaluable forum !

:thumb: From now on I won't waste my time elsewhere, including MS sites, wether social or technet ...

Just a very naive question: I'm not used to the special kind of flash drive created here, may I put some more files on it ( like iso of my dvd) ???

Cyril

alphanumeric · Dec 4, 2013

I've added files to my install thumb drives to customize the install to the PC its being installed on. OEM logo's and system info for the system page. Adding files and folders has never broken anything. Just don't delete anything.

krl01 · Dec 4, 2013

thank you very much !:thumb:

Akeo · Dec 4, 2013

alphanumeric said:
toerk said:

I gave it a shot and I'm also able to install Windows 8 in UEFI while the thumb drive is formatted in NTFS MBR.
To be honest, I unknowingly installed it with these settings a few days ago.

Click to expand...

Ah, thank you for that, now I know its not just me. Looks like its doable on ASUS PC's/motherboards. :thumb:

OK, I had a look at the ASUS K75DE UEFI firmware (using phoenixtool.exe, which will nicely dump all the UEFI modules), and I can confirm that this firmware has both a FAT File System module (93022F8C-1F09-47EF-BBB2-5814FF609DF5) and an NTFS File System module (768BEDFD-7B4B-4C9F-B2FF-6377E3387243). So it looks like alphanumeric is indeed right and NTFS is supported on some UEFI systems.

Still, if the ISO doesn't contain a >4GB file, I think the Microsoft tool is taking a big chance when keeping a target as NTFS, as I'm pretty sure there are way more UEFI systems out there that don't support NTFS than ones that do.

I'll see what I can do to add NTFS support in a future Rufus version. I'm not sure I want to make it selectable by default, unless the ISO has a >4GB file, as I'm pretty sure we'll get a whole lot of users formatting their drives as NTFS and wondering why it doesn't boot, regardless of how many LARGE WARNINGS I add to the app.

Also, it sure would be nice to have a list of all UEFI systems that support NTFS boot...

Oh, and in other news, Rufus v1.4.0 was released a couple days ago.
Of interest to this topic is that it should fix FAT32 formatting for > 32GB drives, offer better detection of flash drives that pretend they aren't removable (I'm looking at you SanDisk!) as well as add support for 15 languages.

alphanumeric · Dec 4, 2013

@Akeo, What's the deal with the Sandisk thumb drives pretending to be un removable? I just bought a couple yesterday and was wondering why the Windows 7 DVD download tool said "No compatible USB devices detected". I ended up going old school and using diskpart. Oh and thank you for your examination of the ASUS BIOS. That stuff is way over my head.

EDIT: I guess this answers my question, sorta kinda, Flash Drive shows as Hard Disk Drive (Fixed Disk) in Windows Explorer

Akeo · Dec 4, 2013

The deal (as far as I understand it - other people may have a slightly different insight) is that, a drive, USB or not, can be presented to a computer as either REMOVABLE or FIXED. It's just a hardware flag that is set on the device, and that the computer queries when the device is plugged.
As an aside, there actually exist manufacturer tools, for a very limited set of USB flash chip controllers, that allow you to switch the flag.

The original idea behind these flags, which basically date to the floppy era, was to let the OS know in advance if a drive or media has a chance to be disconnected/removed without warning, so that it could take some mitigating action, such as waiting for confirmation that a file had been copied in full before updating the filesystem table.

On the other hand, having a FIXED drive told the OS that it could try to optimize file operations for speed, without having to care too much about data being corrupted by a removal, since the expectation was that, short of a power loss, you could just queue a bunch of operations, and expect them to complete on their own.

As time passed, it also became customary to have FIXED for media where you would install an OS (and where you probably wanted to squeeze all the speed you could), and REMOVABLE for everything else.

And then Microsoft, in their great wisdom, decided for some obscure reason that Windows would only ever allow mounting the first partition it recognizes for a REMOVABLE drive, while letting FIXED drives mount as many recognized partitions as there are.

What this means is that ,if you partition a standard (REMOVABLE) flash drive and create, say a FAT32 and an NTFS partition, Windows will only ever allow you to mount the first one, but no matter what you try (short of removing/hiding the first), it will never allow you to mount the second partition.

Of course, this created an issue for USB HDDs, because people expected them to behave as HDDs and to be able to mount multiple partitions at once, as well as possibly run an OS from them. So, even as they are technically removable, USB HDDs have been traditionally set to FIXED, to work around an utterly idiotic Microsoft limitation, whereas USB Flash Drives, that were expected to be small, and therefore rarely need more than one partition, have been kept as REMOVABLE.

Enters Windows 8 to Go, where Microsoft started to realize they had really shot themselves in the foot there, as they needed both an UEFI FAT32 boot partition as well as an NTFS partition to be accessible at the same time when creating the To Go drive.

So what did Microsoft do, rather than fix their bullshit about REMOVABLE not being able to mount more than one recognized partition? Why, they asked hardware manufacturers to sort that one for them, by forcing Win To Go certified UFDs to be set to FIXED! According to Microsoft, of course, this was done to ensure that only devices with sufficient speed and space would be able to run To Go...

But then, manufacturers who wanted to join the To Go party, without having been actively "invited" by Microsoft (by entering a certification agreement) realised that there was really nothing preventing them to also set their new flash drives as FIXED and ensure that users wouldn't complain that their brand new shiny UFDs weren't working with To Go. AFAIK, this is what SanDisk and others decided to do, and why you will find that most of their latest UFDs are set as FIXED.

Of course, all his utterly lazy and illogical crap broke some tools (Rufus was one of those until very recently), that tried to rely on FIXED vs REMOVABLE to find out if a USB drive was likely to be an USB HDD, and avoid people with both an USB HDD, say for backup, and an UDF, ending up formatting their HDD by mistake and losing some very valuable data...

So on the plus side for you, while your new flash drives may not work with the Windows DVD tool (but they should work fine in Rufus v1.4.0

), they will probably work nicely as Windows to Go drives...
Oh, and you may also find that they can be used with some DVRs that also insist on seeing a FIXED flag on an USB device before they allow recording anything (I actually have one of those, and it's quite irritating not to be able to do anything about it).

alphanumeric · Dec 5, 2013

Thanks for that Akeo, there's some good info there. Almost all my thumb drives are older Kinston drives. The Sandisk were on sale and I needed an 8 gig for my laptop. Windows 8.1 enterprise just barley fits on a 4 gig so that didn't leave me any room for the custom OEM info files I add. Funny you should mention Windows To GO, that was why I installed Enterprise on my laptop. I wanted to set one up on an external USB hard drive. I have close to 20 thumb drives but the largest is only 16 GB, too small for WTG. What I'm using is an old repurposed IDE laptop drive in an enclosure. It's just something to play around with. I may give Rufus a go when I update my wife's new Acer laptop to 8.1 or 8.2. I do believe its UEFI. I fell back on disk part because I've used it before. Old dog new tricks.

krl01 · Dec 5, 2013

Concerns about sandisk ...

I just read about sandisk usb flash drives and the fixed drive type, as I created all my UEFI bootable drives with them but ...

NOTE: SanDisk does NOT support configuring flash drives as bootable device for running an OS.

Flash Drive shows as Hard Disk Drive (Fixed Disk) in Windows Explorer

Are they useless ( 3 OS on 3 drives

) ???
They do appear as local drives.

Thanks for your help !

Please , I copied from my retail dvds ,should I erase sandisk usb flash drives ? use rufus instead ?
I think it could be useful to add a warning about "fixed drive" usb flash drive ...
Let me know :shock:

krl01 · Dec 12, 2013

Hello , anybody kind enough to help me make a decision ... ??

alphanumeric · Dec 12, 2013

I created my install thumb drive on my Sandisk manually though diskpart. My laptop booted OK from my Sandisk thumb drive. I haven't done a full clean install with it yet, but see no reason why it wouldn't work. I have never used Rufus so I can't comment on that.

krl01 · Dec 12, 2013

Thank you for your response. I read somewhere that in the process of formatting disks during a new installation it may hangs because the drive is seen as fixed. Someone suggested to disconnect and reconnect the drive , then click refresh. I don't know if it works. Many people complain about this change about new drives, it could break the ability to reinstall from the drive. I really want my drives to be reliable... Aeko also told about this problem, but I don't understand if it causes trouble during the creation of the flash drive or during the reinstallation process, which is far more important to know !
Hoping to be understood, again , thanks !

alphanumeric · Dec 12, 2013

The issue Aeko and I saw is that the drive doesn't show up in the utilities used to make the bootable thumb drive. For example when I run the Windows 7 DVD download tool it just says "No compatible USB devices detected" when trying to use the Sandisk drive. My Kinston thumb drives work fine. The Windows tool like Rufus is looking for "Removable Media". It skips fixed disks. To setup my Sandisk drive I used diskpart. I haven't actually done the install from the Sandisk drive yet. I booted from it and went as far as the language selection screen. I don't know if there are any other wrinkles from using that drive.

krl01 · Dec 12, 2013

Thank you alphanumeric, maybe someone could be more reassuring about using this kind of drive made with diskpart for reinstallation, just for "peace of mind"

Akeo · Dec 12, 2013

alphanumeric said:
The Windows tool like Rufus is looking for "Removable Media". It skips fixed disks.

That's the default behaviour, but you can enable the listing of fixed drives in Rufus by simply checking the relevant checkbox in the advanced options. It is left unchecked by default to avoid people formatting a backup HDD while thinking it's their flash drive.

Unless the device manager has trouble recognizing your flash drive as a mass storage device, I'm not aware of any USB flash drive that can't be detected and formatted in Rufus.

Also note that I added some new logic in Rufus v1.4.x, to better tell if an USB drive is an HDD or a Flash Drive, that doesn't rely only on the FIXED/REMOVABLE attribute, so that Flash Drive with the FIXED attribute are not eliminated as easily as they previously were.
This is brand new heuristic code, so it still needs a little bit adjusting (but you can still list all USB drives with the checkbox if you need to).

alphanumeric · Dec 12, 2013

Akeo said:
alphanumeric said:

The Windows tool like Rufus is looking for "Removable Media". It skips fixed disks.

Click to expand...

That's the default behaviour, but you can enable the listing of fixed drives in Rufus by simply checking the relevant checkbox in the advanced options. It is left unchecked by default to avoid people formatting a backup HDD while thinking it's their flash drive.

Unless the device manager has trouble recognizing your flash drive as a mass storage device, I'm not aware of any USB flash drive that can't be detected and formatted in Rufus.

Also note that I added some new logic in Rufus v1.4.x, to better tell if an USB drive is an HDD or a Flash Drive, that doesn't rely only on the FIXED/REMOVABLE attribute, so that Flash Drive with the FIXED attribute are not eliminated as easily as they previously were.
This is brand new heuristic code, so it still needs a little bit adjusting (but you can still list all USB drives with the checkbox if you need to).

I knew you fixed that but didn't want to give a big drawn out explanation.

krl01 · Dec 13, 2013

Sorry to insist but the important point is : can you perform a full reinstallation of Windows with a bootable fixed flash drive , created by diskpart or Rufus, including the formatting process, without any trouble ??? Thank you

theog · Dec 13, 2013

krl01 said:
Sorry to insist but the important point is : can you perform a full reinstallation of Windows with a bootable fixed flash drive , created by diskpart or Rufus, including the formatting process, without any trouble ??? Thank you

YES.

Using the Windows DVD x32 or x64.

For USB:

x32
USB Windows 7 Installation Key Drive - Create - Windows 7 Help Forums

x64
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15458-uefi-bootable-usb-flash-drive-create-windows.html

For LEGACY mode, x32 or x64
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2299-clean-install-windows-8-a.html

For UEFI mode, x64 only.
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorial...e-firmware-interface-install-windows-8-a.html

krl01 · Dec 14, 2013

Thanks a lot ! :thumbsup:

Now I feel better with my 3 drives , ready for any critical situation.
Congratulations for this excellent forum !

UEFI Bootable USB Flash Drive - Create in Windows

To Create a Bootable UEFI USB Flash Drive using Free Program "Rufus"

To Manually Create a Bootable UEFI USB Flash Drive

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