Unsolved
1 Rookie
•
4 Posts
0
692
January 10th, 2020 13:00
Trying to boot from W10 startup disk made with USB Image Writer in Mint
Hi
I don't know if this is a Dell problem per se but both my IBM machines are Dell and I'm having the same problem with both..
I'm trying to put W10 (Win10_1909_English_x64.iso direct from MS site) on my Vostro 200 with a startup disk made with USB Image Writer in Mint 19.1 MATE. I have used a couple of different thumb drives and a USB HDD which all test good but when trying to boot with any of them on both my Vostro 200 and 1500 laptop I get the message "no boot sector" and it reverts to GRUB. The ISO appears to unpack okay but as I don't have a working Windows installation at the moment and WINE is a mystery to me I don't know how to test the image.
I would put my money on the common denominator being the way I am formatting (tried NTFS and FAT32, checked boot flag in Gparted) or writing to my USB drives but I can't help wondering if there's another reason. Any help would be much appreciated. I may use Linux but I'm more of a nuts and bolts kinda chap so please bear with me!
speedstep
9 Legend
•
47K Posts
0
January 14th, 2020 06:00
1809 1903 1909 iso will not work because UEFI requires FAT32 and the install.wim file is larger than 4 gigs. Windows 10 ISO contains INSTALL.WIM file that is big for FAT32 file system. UEFI requires FAT32
https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln313422/windows-10-iso-contains-wim-file-that-is-big-for-fat32-file-system?lang=en
You have to have working win10 and Open an elevated command prompt to use DISM commands
Run the following DISM command with the correct path to the install.wim and the desired file size in MB:
dism /Split-Image /ImageFile:"c:\temp\install.wim /SWMFile:"c:\temp\install.swm" /FileSize:4000
Now just replace the original install.wim with the created SWM files (install.swm, install2.swm, …)
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/split-a-windows-image--wim--file-to-span-across-multiple-dvds
Split a Windows image (.wim) file into a set of smaller (.swm) files.
Use this procedure when you're installing Windows from media that can't handle the Windows image file size, for example:
DVDs (A standard single-sided DVD stores 4.7GB). This is why DUAL LAYER DVD 8gigs is now REQUIRED for an install ISO.
USB keys formatted as FAT32. FAT32 is required to boot many modern (UEFI-based) PCs, but has a maximum file size of 4GB.