Why is Windows 10 not installed from a flash drive?

Question

System administration

When you try to install win 10 from a flash drive (as when setting the priority in the BIOS and through the boot menu), the computer ignores the flash drive and starts Windows from the hard drive. The motherboard is pretty old year 2009 .. the computer accidentally came to me with a request to reinstall Windows .. the flash drive with Windows is working, the computer itself also sees the flash drive (judging by the info from the BIOS) who can help, experts?) what can I try to do?

Answer 1

Make sure that the problem is in the BIOS and not an incorrectly created flash drive, is it booting from it if you physically turn off the disks?
Go through the usb ports, since old motherboards could work differently with their own different controllers at the time of boot, it is most likely better to use the ports behind the computer and not in front, it is better not to use the port from above, next to the pc2 port for keyboard / mouse, I was told that there may be usb1, I haven’t seen it myself but it’s not devoid of logic (these ports are for mice and keyboards)
2009 maybe usb3 didn’t exist yet, blue ones, but if there is, don’t insert a bootable USB flash drive into them.
You can try to create a flash drive not using the windows download tool, but by copying the iso image sector-by-sector - windd, it makes sense if there is a boot menu item in the BIOS from usb cdrom, you can also sort through different types of boot usb hdd, usb fdd (yes, yes, I saw such), etc.
Do not use flash drives larger than 8 gigabytes , this is strange, but old computers often do not want to load windows from 16 or higher flash drives (while loading linux).
You can not go into the BIOS itself, but use the boot menu, usually it is called by the F8 / F11 / F12 button, see the start window for loading the computer (you can turn off the logo in the BIOS), sometimes it gives more information and control
* check for the presence of the efi item in the BIOS ( uefi) of the bootloader, and turn it on, in 99% of cases it can help (for this mode to work, it is usually enough that the flash drive is basically detected and its format is fat / fat32, but not the boot sector)
* on the contrary, for legacy downloads, this is for the case when the download starts, but at the time of installation, the system does not see the flash drive already in the setup and asks to insert a cdrom, you can create a second partition or use an additional hdd disk , and copy the contents of iso directly to the root ( if it is considered as an archive), in this case the setup will find all the files on its own and continue the installation from the disk.
Another exotic way is to boot from livecd ubuntu (I have never seen that it was impossible to boot linux, you can sort through different usb loaders, for example unetbootin), install virtualbox or qemu/kvm and using the entire system disk as a disk of a virtual machine, start the installation from the virtual machine (the very first process of copying files before the first reboot), but continue the installation after this reboot already from the real machine by rebooting ubuntu and removing the flash drive .
This method implies only legacy boot mode (virtual machines do not know how to properly uefi and do not have access to editing the boot menu), as virtual machines have tools to protect the MBR table and bootloader from the virtual machine, writing changes to a separate file, but as far as I know this is not the default option. Since inside the virtual machine the 'hardware' is standard and debugged with a bang, as well as the cdrom is 'real' there - the installer will load without any problems.

Answer 2

1. The flash drive must be bootable - i.e. formatted in a special way;
2. In the BIOS, you need to set the boot from a USB flash drive.
If this does not help, you can pull out the HDD, use an adapter (for example, SATA - USB) to make a "bootable USB flash drive" out of it, insert it into the computer and boot. After installing the system, you will need to overwrite the boot option "Windows Setup". All )

Answer 3

It is unlikely to be the answer to the question, but I always record Windows through Rufus. There are a couple of options, if something does not work with some options, then I record with others and everything is fine. I interrupted more than 2 dozen computers - everything was normal

Answer 4

Not complete information about the computer. If you knew the model of the mother, then you could give advice, but so ...
If the motherboard is really very old, it is possible that installing Windows is possible only from a CDROM. This is due to the specifics of powering USB ports on older mothers.

Answer 5

1) Disable fast boot
2) Make a flash drive in FAT32 with an image that boots in Legacy (BIOS) mode, not UEFI. UEFI on a computer in 2009 cannot be. Use Rufus to prepare it.
3) Try launching with a boot device selection via a hot key (someone like it, maybe F8 or F12).
4) Make sure that the platform is suitable (x64 image and the platform supports x64).

Answer 6

Download ventoy and put it on a flash drive. And you can boot directly from iso. including UEFI