WINPE maker won't boot
I used backupper 3.2 to create bootable USB. Using Windows PE in UEFI mode as recommended it was successfull.
In bios however I don't see an UEFI option for that USB drive when booting. So I can only attempt to boot in legacy and it will of course not boot.
I have a ASUS GENE VI motherboard fully UEFI capable. and enabled in BIOS as well. (all default settings)
Comments
I don't understand what you want. I rewrite what you said:
1) you were successful in creating a bootable USB stick, ticking WinPE.
2) you could not boot from the stick, because it did not boot neither in UEFI mode nor in legacy mode.
I suggest you try to boot from file from \efi\boot\bootx64.efi if such a file exists on the stick. And usually Windows PE boots both UEFI and BIOS firmware, just the bit depth has to match. (I have to admit that I don't have a stick, my virtual computer does not allow formatting, I will create a stick somehow and analyse it).
As a bypass I invite you to create a most bootable stick:
a) format the stick in FAT32 from Windows
say this in an administrator command prompt (where g: is the drive letter)
bootsect /nt60 g:
bootsect /nt60 /mbr g:
then
b) create an ISO WinPE bootable in AOMEI Backupper 3.2
c) double-click the ampe.ISO, and
d) copy everything from the mounted ISO to the stick.
This method works since Windows 8 (because step c) mounts the ISO. It becomes a virtual CD. Eject the virtual CD to close it.)
(I know that ampe.ISO contains everything needed, but want to verify, will come back within a few hours with this).
I just tried, on my virtual computer, to create an USB bootable media, and succeeded. The USB stick was bootable. Computer is a Windows 10, EFI firmware, 64 bit.
I noticed one strangeness when creating the bootable media: AOMEI backupper asked whether i wanted to create it based of UEFI boot mode, or create it based on legacy boot mode. However in standard WinPE both boot modes are always provided, and it is just a few files and commands, when doing it manually. This distinction in aomei does not make sense. I tried: The aomei stick really contains only either UEFI or BIOS, not both.
The distinction between 32bit and 64bit always has to be honored, they are not exchangable in WinPE, and it could be a cause of error in AOMEI. The corresponding files (bootmgr, bootmgfw.efi) do have the same names for 32bit and 64bit. Only bootx64.efi and bootia32.efi have different names, but are rarely an issue.
I pushed it to the limits and changed the partition style of the USB stick to FDD to see what happens. (A bootable USB stick must be HDD style, MBR, with 1 partition only. And for UEFI it must be FAT32.). Backupper it converted to HDD style, NTFS format, and exited in the middle of the creation, and did not complete the creation with the usual success message. I formatted manually to FAT32 and it succeeded again.
I may suggest the following preparatory commands on the stick
diskpart
list disk
select disk # (where #is the usb stick number, carefully as in the other your thread)
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
format fs=fat32 quick
active
det par (this shows the drive letter of the selected partition)
exit
bootsect /nt60 /mbr g: (where G: is the letter of the stick. This and the next optional to make it BIOS legacy-bootable, as far as concerns the boot sectors)
bootsect /nt60 g:
exit
Ok. I got 2 cheap USB sticks from SanDisk. They are unfortunately the ones that were made for windows to see them as internal harddrives, and not as removable media.
This was a requirement at some point from windows, to allow the "windows certified" to be put on products, claiming it was for security reasons.
I believe this practice has later been reversed and current USB sticks being manufactured now are properly rekognized as removable media. This might play a role for the Backupper USB creation tool?
For example I cannot create a proper windows 10 install on these usb sticks using windows dvdtool. I have to use ZOTAC WinUSB Maker v1.1. But then they work.
I want to buy a higher capacity/quality usb stick and make it a swizz army with YUMI. So I can have backupper/MEMtool/windows 7/10 installs on it.
At the moment I am in a situation though where I can not use backupper proper. How to make a proper backup/restore?
This as you know failed for me last time. Noone else with same problem as me? It's not like I got a very unique setup. Just ASUS GENE VI UEFI motherboard and winsows 10 64bit, haswell. pretty generic, albeit "modern".
You said something about problems for backupper handling 3 partitions?
Maybe this is the solution then:
How to Delete Recovery Partition in Windows 10?
You cannot delete a recovery partition with Windows 10 Disk Management for it has crucial files, but you can use diskpart.exe to delete it. However, you still cannot extend the remaining partition with the new created unallocated space if the recovery partition appears before the C: drive. Hence, you need third party partition software to do this job. AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, free partition software, can delete recovery partition and extend a partition as long as there is unallocated space on the disk.
So make sure my windows 10 only has the 100mb system partition and main system, then do system backup, and a system restore should function normally?
answer to #3.
you may try reinitialize the partitioning of the stick.
diskpart
lis dis
sel dis n (where n is the number of the stick)
det disk (make sure it is the stick)
clean
convert mbr
exit
Same can be done using BOOTICE but the program requires some thoughts to use, it is a helpful program. You can try in BOOTICE 1.3.3.2 Parts Manage->Re-Partitioning section, it tells you the current partitioning and you can re-partition for USB HDD mode (single partition). download is here
I advice against multiple tools and YUMI. You may loose system restore points when you boot from it. There is additional work in maintaining the stick (it is easier to keep all tools archived on disk in form of .iso and .zip, keep the current ones on individual media, and re-create the others before needed). In addition you did not say whether you have an issue with aomei backupper and your sandisk? >>This might play a role for the Backupper USB creation tool? <<< who knows, if not you? I advice to try.
answer to #4
no you must not delete the RECOVERY partition that Windows did install. Even as Backupper does not handle every case right, it must not be fixed by deleting the partition.
In earlier installs, Windows installed two partitions (system, C:). In more recent installs , you get three partitions (system, C:, WinRE), or even more (old winre, system, C:, winre). Naming and labelling of the winre partition is inconsistent across Windows tools, it has no label, or has label WinRE, and type is Recovery.
There are two types of recovery partition, the WinRE Partition (200-800MB in size) and the factory reset partition (usually several GB large, for Windows 7 8 10, size is 15plus GB). Your quoted "solution" would be acceptable about the factory reset partition, this partition may be deleted, and usually it must be deleted from the tools provided, eg. HP Recovery Manager. (actually the "solution" is about the WinRE partition, but it must not be deleted, and it is too little to make sense to delete, even as the quotation is from AOMEI http://www.disk-partition.com/windows-10/recovery-partition-after-upgrading-to-windows-10-4348.html). For example, creating bootable media needs parts from the recovery partition in my opinion.
Ok. Well as you may know I have a 250gb SSD and 500gb SSD so I will experiment on my 500gb a bit.
But the whole point of software like backupper is for endusers like me to NOT have to go through all this disk part process manually to make sure shit is working proper. This is something IMO Backupper recovery program should do for us.
I'm guessing Destination for system restore is a partition, rather than a DISK because it should be possible to have a system partition + data storage partition on a harddrive, and be able to do a system restore without affecting the data storage partition right?
If not, and it will always just mess with whole DISK, then I don't understand why the destination source can't be a DISK and backupper perform all this diskpart steps for us to make sure a system restore is done right everytime.
It's possible to just use built-in system recovery options in windows 10, but backupper is just soooo much faster and, at least previously for me, was reliable and very simple.
I sometimes lend my pc to my roommate when I travel, and backupper was perfect tool to simply backup my PC, and load a guest image for him to make sure my PC was exactly as I left it when I came back.
Now this process seems significantly limited because of the reliability/compatability issues with backupper and windows 10
I will test bootice to "fix" my usb sticks and make them proper removable media, and hopefully the Backupper WindowsPE will work for me.
Thank btw for the detailed answers and entertaining my suggestions
It just feels like I am doing something wrong... this should be much simpler and other people don't seem to have same problems as me. And as I mentioned previously, my situation feels very genereic... windows 10 64bit, 1 system drive, with no special setup.
One thing I did change however, was my system drive is no longer on SATA port 0, but 1... hmm just an afterthought. I remember something about making sure to install windows on your single installed SSD when it was in SATA 0, that was some years ago though.
I'm fairly confident that it should not matter what SATA port is used. Just the bootorder might need to be revised in BIOS after change. But I will test putting it back to SATA_0
I don't see any option for USB HDD mode in bootice.
I will try the manual mode you described first then
Now Backupper wants me to install windows AIK/ADK, it didn't ask for that before... On the redirect page does not mention anything about windows 10.
http://www.backup-utility.com/help/aik.html?adb
Even the redirect to windows homepage says windows 7 only.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=5753
ParadokS , If the system is Win10. You need to downlod ADk.