Solved PC Will Not Boot From a WinPE 4 Boot Disk

My computer shipped from the factory (Dell) with Windows 7 x64. I recently did a clean ('custom') install of Windows 8 Pro x64. The install went very well, no problems. To install Windows 8, I booted from a USB flash drive.

I actually have two licensed copies of Windows 8. The other copy is on a DVD. To test the functioning of my DVD drive, I tried to boot from the Windows 8 disk. The computer would not boot. My computer had no trouble booting from the USB flash drive version of my Windows 8 installer, obviously, but it won't boot from a disk version of same.

As a further test, I tried to boot my computer from my original factory Windows 7 install disk. The computer successfully booted from this disk.

I therefore concluded that my computer can boot from a disk made with WinPE 3, but it will not boot from a disk made with WinPE 4, even though it will boot from a USB flash drive made with WinPE 4. I tried to boot from other bootable disks made with WinPE 4 - none would boot the computer. Other bootable flash drives made with WinPE 4 have no problem booting my computer.

My computer is partitioned with a MBR and uses a BIOS. I made no changes to my BIOS settings, and unfortunately there will be no more BIOS updates for my computer.

Should I just accept that I cannot boot from disks made with WinPE 4, or is there some way around this? I'm not too broken up about this because, after all, I have no trouble booting from WinPE 4 flash drives. And disks are on the way out, anyway.

I use Macrium Reflect and I believe their recovery disc is WinPE 4. I also have a legacy BIOS and I can never get that disc to boot on the first try. It actually starts and then the screen goes black. What I have to do to get it to stick is leave the disk in the DVD tray and manually power down. Now, I apply power the second time and I am able to get to the BIOS boot menu. Once there, I can select the boot from DVD and it works. It would be interesting to see if you could get yours to work the same way. I offer no technical merit behind what happens in my particular case.

I also use Macrium Reflect. Their WinPE 4-based rescue media boots my computer, but I have it on a flash drive. Let me make a disk and I'll try your method. Thanks!

Okay...do you want to laugh? I'm not sure if I should laugh or feel embarrassed.

I made a Reflect rescue disk and...it booted my computer. Not only that: I also got my Win8 install DVD to boot my computer. So, what did I do differently this time around?

For one thing, when I saw the message "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD" I pressed Enter instead of the spacebar, which is what I usually press. But that can't be the solution. 'Any key' means 'any key'.

No, what worked this time is that I waited. And waited. When you're used to booting from a USB flash drive it's easy to forget how long it takes to boot from a disk. At least a WinPE 3 boot disk displays a progress bar with a message "Windows is loading files..." so it looks like something is going on. A WinPE 4 boot disk shows no progress bar, just a blank screen, so it's easy to think that nothing is happening.

So I waited. And eventually I saw the little blue flag and you know what comes next...

Is it or is it ? I'll settle for :thumb: .

Hey that's great news and I think I also fixed my DVD legacy boot situation by removing the EFI folder and efibootmgr. Now, my newly created disc is booting the first time like it should! Sounds like a win-win to me! Cheers!