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Bootable USB media GUI problem.

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Hi - I have a Sony Vaio laptop running Win 8.1, from which I have created a bootable USB flash drive via Acronis 2016.

The laptop comes with a hardware "Assist" button which if you press this button while the machine is off it will boot to an external bootable media such as the flash drive.

Problem is, it seems to boot to the flash drive fine, but I have no way to select the options presented in the user interface.  There is no way to move the mouse pointer.  The scratch pad has no effect.

I have managed to select some options from the keyboard (UK configuration) but not always successful.  For example, I may get to a selection by trial and error using the tab and arrow keys, but then the enter key is ineffective at activating that button.

The flash drive is more than 32Gb which I now read is a potentially bad move, but I doubt that is relevant here, as it probably would not boot up at all if that were an issue.

Any ideas?

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I would try an external USB keyboard and mouse (perhaps with a Usb hub if you don't have enough ports to support an external flash drive and the external devices).  Some touch devices, like the Surface Pro 4, have specialized drivers for the touchpad and/or toucscreen so using the external peripherals is a quick fix. If that doesn't work, then the Linux default media doesn't have the necessary drivers.  You can download and install the Winows 10 (6.0) adk from Microsoft (see the link at the bottom of this post).  Once installed, re-run the media builder, but select WinPE instead and it will do the rest.  WinPE may have the necessary drivers by default (whatever drivers are available in Windows 10 by default).  If that still doesn't work, then you may have to inject the necessary drivers into the WinPE after that.  Before we get that far, just try the default WinPE (or try the external keyboard/mouse) and see if either of those help.

Thanks.  All sounds very complicated. At the moment I am busy trying to upgrade to win 10 while it is still free.  with a view to backing that up and then downgrading again to a restored backup of win 8.1.  Running into problems with "update failed" so will rethink this bootable media problem when this issue is sorted out.

Sure thing.  External USB mouse/keyboard should be pretty easy to test if you have them and the necessary usb ports to plug them in.