ejn63 above is correct. I'll simply add two things. First, if the flash drive still doesn't work after preparing it with Microsoft's Media Creation Tool, then try a different flash drive, because some flash drives apparently have trouble being used as boot devices. And second, when you get into Windows Setup, you may want to wipe your disk clean if you've had Linux on it and mucked around with Windows Recovery partitions, which as you suspect was not a great idea because on some systems it's actually the partition that Windows initially boots from, and if you use BitLocker it's also the partition that stores the files necessary to unlock the encrypted OS partition. And Windows 10 upgrades, which will be arriving every March and September now, will always recreate it if it's missing anyway.
To clean your disk once you're in Windows Setup, when you get to the point of the wizard where you select a partition to install Windows onto, delete all partitions listed on your disk until you're left with "Drive X Unallocated space" and nothing else listed for Drive X.
I downloaded Microsoft Media Creation Tool and created a bootable USB with Windows 10 - but when I plug it in, boot up my laptop and hit F12, I don't see an option to boot from USB.
I tried with another USB and get the same result. I've tried resetting the BIOS and checking that all USB stuff is enabled
Here is what I see:
Boot mode is set to:UEFI, Secure Boot:ON
UEFI BOOT
Windows Boot Manager
* Hard Drive
CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive
OTHER OPTIONS:
Setup
Diagnostics
Change Boot Mode Setting
I've tried selecting all options in UEFI BOOT but nothing happens.
Any other suggestions? I'm getting frustrated because there are no error messages or any information being displayed.
"operation system not found" error seems to happen when the SSD is not bootable. i'll need to repair the disk by taking it out of the laptop.. or maybe i can find an external cd drive and try to boot a cd
i replaced windows with linux a while back and i'm trying to install windows 10 on it again, but i'm unable to boot from usb. i don't remember exactly how i installed linux since it was many years ago.
when i switch to UEFI mode i get 2 types of errors:
when i disable 'secure boot' and enable 'legacy' mode - i sometimes see the USB option, but selecting it always gives me an "operating system not found" error
when i enable 'secure boot' - i don't even see an option to boot from usb
i removed the windows recovery partition for the extra space.. but in hindsight that was a terrible mistake.
please help.. i've read through a lot of discussions here and none of them seem to help.
Yes, the "operating system not found" error appears when your system has attempted to boot from the hard drive unsuccessfully, but that's entirely separate from not being able to boot from USB. When using UEFI boot (which you should be), it is expected that a USB option will not appear in the boot list in the BIOS Setup, but it should be appearing in the F12 one-time boot menu. Do you have an option in your BIOS called "USB Emulation"? If so, change it to the opposite setting. On my XPS 15 9530, I remember having that setting in one mode allowed me to use my USB keyboard in the BIOS Setup but didn't allow booting from USB, and having it set the other way flipped that around. But other than that, I'm not sure what could be going on. If your flash drive is formatted as FAT32 (not NTFS!), which it should have been by the Media Creation Tool, then as long as it's plugged in from the moment your system starts booting, it should be listed in the F12 boot menu. Yes, technically you could work around this by installing Windows onto that hard drive from another system, but that's going to make things more complicated, not less, particularly as you'll have to make absolutely sure that the first time you boot from the hard drive is after it's been installed back into the laptop, NOT while it's installed in whatever other PC you might use.
A few more thoughts in addition to the post I just wrote above:
1. When you say you're using "a USB", is that a flash drive or an external spinning hard drive? You want to be using the former.
2. Make sure you're plugging the flash drive directly into a USB port on your laptop, not going through a hub or anything. You may as well also disconnect any other USB devices for the moment.
3. The F12 menu option to boot from USB may not be called "Boot from USB". It might show the name of the flash drive or perhaps even something like "Windows Boot Manager" or "Windows Setup", although you might also see the former as a reference to the Windows bootloader on your hard drive.
If you've already tried multiple USB flash drives and you've confirmed that they're formatted as FAT32 rather than NTFS, and you've got UEFI boot enabled (you should disable Legacy mode since you're using Windows 10), AND your F12 menu still doesn't show anything that even sounds like it could refer to something on a flash drive, then I'm not sure what to suggest. Maybe updating your BIOS, but obviously that's a bit more difficult when your OS isn't bootable, especially if you can't get USB booting working either.
Since the normal problems have been well covered, perhaps going outside the box would yield so pertinent info.
Flash drives are best if the size is 8-32 GBs. As was mentioned, there may be drives that don't support necessary performance and can cause problems.
If you used the Media Creation tool to prepare the drive, do you remember the basic steps you chose during that process? Do you currently have a copy of the Win 10 .iso file? I prefer to configure my flash drives using Diskpart and then mount the .iso file and copy over the files from the .iso.
The UEFI media must be installed on the system PRIOR to booting or restarts for it to be recognized. If you have multiple options for plugging in the USB drive, have you tried them all?
If you can remove the current primary drive, you might do that while continuing to work on booting the system to the USB drive.
We can assume you never made a Win 10 Recovery Drive before you installed Linux?
Thank you .. i will try and let you know.. i need to go browsing centre for flashing usb via media creation tool . Still yesterday I flashed usb in android using iso2usb apk app.
ejn63
10 Elder
•
30.6K Posts
0
June 23rd, 2018 04:00
Enable UEFI and secure boot. Make sure you've made a UEFI-bootable flash drive with the Microsoft media creation tool (NOT another utility).
Connect the flash drive and power the system on. Press F12 to boot from the flash drive and kick off the install.
jphughan
9 Legend
•
14K Posts
0
June 23rd, 2018 07:00
ejn63 above is correct. I'll simply add two things. First, if the flash drive still doesn't work after preparing it with Microsoft's Media Creation Tool, then try a different flash drive, because some flash drives apparently have trouble being used as boot devices. And second, when you get into Windows Setup, you may want to wipe your disk clean if you've had Linux on it and mucked around with Windows Recovery partitions, which as you suspect was not a great idea because on some systems it's actually the partition that Windows initially boots from, and if you use BitLocker it's also the partition that stores the files necessary to unlock the encrypted OS partition. And Windows 10 upgrades, which will be arriving every March and September now, will always recreate it if it's missing anyway.
To clean your disk once you're in Windows Setup, when you get to the point of the wizard where you select a partition to install Windows onto, delete all partitions listed on your disk until you're left with "Drive X Unallocated space" and nothing else listed for Drive X.
bill_l322x
1 Rookie
•
6 Posts
0
June 23rd, 2018 11:00
Thanks for the suggestion. Will let you know how it goes
bill_l322x
1 Rookie
•
6 Posts
0
June 23rd, 2018 11:00
Thanks for the reply. Trying it now
bill_l322x
1 Rookie
•
6 Posts
0
June 23rd, 2018 16:00
ejn36, jphughan,
I downloaded Microsoft Media Creation Tool and created a bootable USB with Windows 10 - but when I plug it in, boot up my laptop and hit F12, I don't see an option to boot from USB.
I tried with another USB and get the same result. I've tried resetting the BIOS and checking that all USB stuff is enabled
Here is what I see:
Boot mode is set to:UEFI, Secure Boot:ON
I've tried selecting all options in UEFI BOOT but nothing happens.
Any other suggestions? I'm getting frustrated because there are no error messages or any information being displayed.
bill_l322x
1 Rookie
•
6 Posts
0
June 23rd, 2018 20:00
I've tried a few more things:
Pls help
bill_l322x
1 Rookie
•
6 Posts
0
June 23rd, 2018 21:00
ok.. i think i found the source of the problem.
"operation system not found" error seems to happen when the SSD is not bootable. i'll need to repair the disk by taking it out of the laptop.. or maybe i can find an external cd drive and try to boot a cd
what a headache. not even sure how this happened
jphughan
9 Legend
•
14K Posts
0
June 24th, 2018 08:00
Yes, the "operating system not found" error appears when your system has attempted to boot from the hard drive unsuccessfully, but that's entirely separate from not being able to boot from USB. When using UEFI boot (which you should be), it is expected that a USB option will not appear in the boot list in the BIOS Setup, but it should be appearing in the F12 one-time boot menu. Do you have an option in your BIOS called "USB Emulation"? If so, change it to the opposite setting. On my XPS 15 9530, I remember having that setting in one mode allowed me to use my USB keyboard in the BIOS Setup but didn't allow booting from USB, and having it set the other way flipped that around. But other than that, I'm not sure what could be going on. If your flash drive is formatted as FAT32 (not NTFS!), which it should have been by the Media Creation Tool, then as long as it's plugged in from the moment your system starts booting, it should be listed in the F12 boot menu. Yes, technically you could work around this by installing Windows onto that hard drive from another system, but that's going to make things more complicated, not less, particularly as you'll have to make absolutely sure that the first time you boot from the hard drive is after it's been installed back into the laptop, NOT while it's installed in whatever other PC you might use.
jphughan
9 Legend
•
14K Posts
0
June 24th, 2018 08:00
A few more thoughts in addition to the post I just wrote above:
1. When you say you're using "a USB", is that a flash drive or an external spinning hard drive? You want to be using the former.
2. Make sure you're plugging the flash drive directly into a USB port on your laptop, not going through a hub or anything. You may as well also disconnect any other USB devices for the moment.
3. The F12 menu option to boot from USB may not be called "Boot from USB". It might show the name of the flash drive or perhaps even something like "Windows Boot Manager" or "Windows Setup", although you might also see the former as a reference to the Windows bootloader on your hard drive.
If you've already tried multiple USB flash drives and you've confirmed that they're formatted as FAT32 rather than NTFS, and you've got UEFI boot enabled (you should disable Legacy mode since you're using Windows 10), AND your F12 menu still doesn't show anything that even sounds like it could refer to something on a flash drive, then I'm not sure what to suggest. Maybe updating your BIOS, but obviously that's a bit more difficult when your OS isn't bootable, especially if you can't get USB booting working either.
Saltgrass
4 Operator
•
4.3K Posts
0
June 24th, 2018 09:00
Since the normal problems have been well covered, perhaps going outside the box would yield so pertinent info.
Flash drives are best if the size is 8-32 GBs. As was mentioned, there may be drives that don't support necessary performance and can cause problems.
If you used the Media Creation tool to prepare the drive, do you remember the basic steps you chose during that process? Do you currently have a copy of the Win 10 .iso file? I prefer to configure my flash drives using Diskpart and then mount the .iso file and copy over the files from the .iso.
The UEFI media must be installed on the system PRIOR to booting or restarts for it to be recognized. If you have multiple options for plugging in the USB drive, have you tried them all?
If you can remove the current primary drive, you might do that while continuing to work on booting the system to the USB drive.
We can assume you never made a Win 10 Recovery Drive before you installed Linux?
GimelL
1 Message
0
October 20th, 2019 23:00
You can have a 100% working solution using a USB drive with http://www.easy2boot.com
Just place your Windows ISO file on the appropriate directory and you will be able to boot from it.
Str_Dell
2 Posts
0
February 3rd, 2020 21:00
Thank you .. i will try and let you know.. i need to go browsing centre for flashing usb via media creation tool . Still yesterday I flashed usb in android using iso2usb apk app.
Thank you for your response !