Skip to main content

70 Year Old Newbie...Unable to boot from USB or CD

Thread needs solution

I have a Samsung W10 laptop.  I have created my Acronis backup image.  I have created both a bootable CD and a bootable USB stick.  I think I have changed the boot order in the BIOS to USB, then CD, then C drive.

I'm testing the bootable USB and CD and am unable to get the laptop to boot from either the CD or the USB stick.  It just boots normally to my desktop.

What can I do to get the PC to boot from either, or both, the USB or CD?

Thanks,

0 Users found this helpful

Doug, welcome to these User Forums.

The most likely reason why your Samsung laptop is not booting from your Acronis Rescue media (on CD or USB) is that the laptop has UEFI BIOS with Secure Boot enabled.

I found the same problem with an Acer laptop that I worked with recently, with Secure Boot enabled it completely ignored my USB rescue media, even though I was using the Windows PE version of the media, but once I disabled Secure Boot it was quite happy to boot from it!

Steve...thanks for the reply, but I already had disabled the "Secure Boot" feature.  The only thing in the BIOS that I have not played with is the ability to change the "UEFI Boot" to a "CSM Boot".  I don't really know what either of them are.

Doug, I would not recommend changing the UEFI settings to CSM as this can cause problems should you later want to recover your computer, as the BIOS mode used in recovery should match how your Windows OS uses.  You can check what Windows uses by running msinfo32 and checking the BIOS mode shown in the output report.

Please see KB 59877: Acronis True Image 2017: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media which shows what you should be looking for when booting the Rescue Media.

You may need to consider creating the alternative Windows PE version of the Rescue Media if your Samsung computer doesn't let you boot from the default Linux based media.

See KB 59184: Acronis True Image 2017: How to create a WinPE-based bootable media which gives the steps that are needed to make this type of media.  This was written for the 2017 version but the steps remain very similar for your 2016 product.

Steve...Thanks for your efforts.  I created the Windows PE version of the rescue disk (USB stick), but my Windows 10 Toshiba will still not boot from the USB stick.  It does work on my Windows 7 machines.

I'm going to need to find another solution for the W10 machine. 

Doug

Doug, is this a different computer to the one you mentioned in the opening post for this topic?  You mentioned a Samsung W10 laptop, now you mention a Toshiba W10 one?

The ATI WinPE rescue media should work with any computer provided you match the CPU architecture, i.e. 64-bit for the media and computer.  If you have a 32-bit machine then you would need to use the MVP Custom ATIPE builder tool which can create 32-bit WinPE rescue media.

Ooops.  Original post was not correct.  Machine is a Toshiba 64 bit (new phone is a Samsung).

I was finally able to create a bootable USB stick.  Not sure what I was doing wrong before, but I should be good to go now if I ever have a big crash.  Thank you again for your assistance!

Doug

Doug, glad that you have got the USB stick made and hopefully have been able to test that you can boot from it OK.

Steve, I spoke too soon.  This morning I decided to also make a CD rescue media.  When I tested it to be sure the system would boot from it, it did not work.  I tried the USB stick I made yesterday, and it also failed to boot.

After further testing I found that both of the rescue media would work if I did a RESTART of the computer while they were inserted.  However neither of them work if I do I full SHUTDOWN, insert the media and turn on the computer.  They both boot directly to the desktop.  In trhe event of a major malfunction, I obviously need to have them work from a full shutdown.

Any ideas on why...or what I can try to fix this situation?

 

Doug, I suspect that you have Windows Fast Start enabled, so when you do a shutdown, what you are actually doing is putting the computer into a hybrid sleep (aka hibernation) state, but when you do a Restart, then you are actually shutting down the computer fully and are then able to boot from an alternative device such as a CD or USB stick.

Doug, glad to be able to help, thanks for the feedback.