Skip to main content

Windows 10 Always Boots to Rescue Media

Thread solved

I'm running ATI 2020.21400 on a Win10 machine.Disk and partition backups are going to a USB portable hard drive designated drive B.The machine is usually on 24/7 with an occasional reboot to clear RAM and/or install new software.

I have created bootable rescue media via ATI to a 2gb partition at the front of the existing partition. I have tested a rescue boot and restore and it works, although I do have to hit F8 to get into the boot menu and select the portable.

Yesterday I had to reboot and without entering the boot menu, it booted to the rescue media. I restarted, hit F* and selected the Windows boot drive and that was fine. But in further testing, it seems that on every restart, if I don't enter the boot menu, it boots to the rescue media. This just started last night. Previously if I didn't hit F8 it booted to Windows normally.

I have checked the BIOS and don't want to change the boot order which currently has CDROM first, followed by USB, and then S/HDD.

Is there anyway to get the old behavior back? Could the drive letter B be part of the issue? The 2gb boot partition is drive letter T. The motherboard is an Asus Prime B250M-C.

Thanks.

0 Users found this helpful

Fred, this is caused by your BIOS boot order and having a bootable USB drive in the list ahead of your main hard drive.

Your options are to move the OS drive ahead of the USB entry in the boot order, or else ensure that the USB drive is unplugged when booting.

Steve Smith wrote:
Your options are to move the OS drive ahead of the USB entry in the boot order, or else ensure that the USB drive is unplugged when booting.

My concern with changing the boot order is that I will then only be able to boot to a USB if I enter the boot manager. Which I guess isn't that big of a deal. As long as I remember to hit F8. I guess I'll change it and test it.

Thanks Steve.

If you are running Windows 10, then look at holding the Shift key while clicking on 'Restart' which brings up the Windows Recovery menu panel, where you can choose to use another device then select your USB rescue media.  I have been using this approach on my HP laptop to save having to keep hitting the ESC or F2 key on boot to get to the boot menu or BIOS, but where the laptop is often too fast for me to catch it!

Steve Smith wrote:

If you are running Windows 10, then look at holding the Shift key while clicking on 'Restart' which brings up the Windows Recovery menu panel, where you can choose to use another device then select your USB rescue media.

Changing the boot order works as described, and much easier that un/replugging the USB drive every time.

And your tip about the shift key on restart is one I don't recall every seeing before. And works great.

Thanks for being a veritable fount of information.