W10 boot and UEFI instead of BIOS

[Suff]

This is deeply technical and of interest to WM and others. Geek level alert.

I'm slowly getting new devices and only have two bios boot devices left.

I've been coming across issues with the UEFI and the way Windows manages it. Essentially I've been used to occasionally adding a hard drive to a system, installing to that drive and then formatting the old drive once I've copied across all the data I want.

Twice now I've come across loss of boot when the first drive is formatted. Rather irritating so I set out to find out what went wrong.

The answer is both complicated and simple. When Windows first installs on a UEFI system, it creates a 100m Fat32 partition at the beginning of the first drive. It then creates the C drive partition and then installs the boot config in the 100m partition which it then designates as UEF and hides it from the system.

All fine, until you decide to add a new HDD And create a new install of windows. In this case Windows creates the C drive on the new drive and ADDS the boot info to the 100mb UEFI partition on the first drive. You then wind up with Two Windows boot options on your windows boot menu, one for the fist drive and one for the added drive.

So as per previous builds, remove the first drive, or, worse, clean and format it. Hey presto no boot. Because you just removed the UEFI boot partition even though you told Windows to install on the other drive.

There are ways around this such as removing the first drive before installing. Windows will then create all the correct partitions, but you have to configure it in the UEFI before booting to boot from that drive (it will list itself as a windows boot manager on the new drive in the UEFI interface). But what if you are adding a new, large, faster drive to a system with embedded ssd? Now you have a problem.

The fix is to either create a partition on the new drive before installing windows, 100mb, fat32. Or, if you are stuck without the partition, use a tool like MiniTool partition Wizard free and shrink the C drive then create a 100mb fat32 partition.

Boot from the install usb key or DVD, select to repair and go into command prompt. Use the BCDBoot command to re-create the boot files. You are back in business.

I had to do this to repair a SSD I took out of my netbook I'm giving away to charity. I cleaned and re-installed the onboard SSD, but the M.2 drive I took out only had the C drive and recovery partition on it. This process worked perfectly.

The command is bcdboot [C:]\Windows /s [S:] where [C:] is the drive with the Windows install on it and [S:] is the 100mb Fat32 partition. These drives are not necessarily C: and S: in the recovery environment.

You can use diskpart and use list volume to see which volumes are what. In my case the command was bcdboot D:\Windows /s C: because the recovery environment had mapped the drives in order on the disk.

Once BCDBoot is complete it will mark the boot partition as UEFI and it will vanish from Windows unless you want to find it and know how.

I then used WinToUSB to mark the Windows install on the M.2 drive as a Windows To Go system and it now boots from USB. Only 2.0 for now, I have to get some more drivers on it and sort them to start at boot before it will boot from USB3. However I gained what I want. Another Windows install under a key which cannot be transferred which remains of use to me.

Thought I'd share as this is not really clearly visible in all the support documents I see online.

[Workingman]

I always partition my drives to C: and D: as 1/3 to 2/3 or 1/4 to 3/4 depending on size.

The C: drive is only for the OS and program files, D: is for data files created during use. I move all the Quick Access locations for Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures and Videos to D: as well as making D: the default for Word, Excel etc.

In Win 11 the Disk Management tool does a reasonable job but it is wise to have bootable recovery USBs just in case.

My present SSD setup is shown as follows:

Disk 0 Part 1 100 MB the EFI system
Disk 0 Part 5 1.00 GB the pre-installed Acer recovery / installation disk
Acer C: (Pt 3) is where Windows OS and my programs are
Files D: (Pt 4)is my data storage. There is VM on there as well

On boot it defaults to Acer C: but I can change it to Part 1 or Part 5 in emergencies. The systems contained in Part 1 and 5 are on USBs in an envelope in a drawer.

The laptop does not have an integral optical drive (DVD) hence the 1.00GB Part 5 partition.

It is an easy setup and keeps things neat and tidy.

In case anyone is wondering... Disk 0 Part 2 is only shown in a disk analyser, something like AEFDISK, and it has a zero size. I assume it was a temp partition created by Acer on initial configuration of the SSD. I have let it be.

[TheOstrich]

Whilst I don't understand any of the above, can I make an observation in layman's language?

(1) my current (ancient) desktop is UEFI (according to the set up screen) and (2) I have a USB flash drive permanently attached to the computer, designated the F: Drive, for storing all my working Windows 10 Office documents (Excel & Word).

What I have noticed is that the computer - unpredictably - occasionally freezes as if it's overloaded with commands. This may be associated with working in the background on (automatic) Windows Updates, but the jury's out.

When this happens, quite often, a reboot (Restart) does not work, even switching it On and Off (oh yes, I know that fix! ) doesn't work either.

I have to bludgeon my way into Setup (F2 key rapidly) and reset the order of Boot Up, because Windows Boot Manager (or whatever it is) has been reset to choice no 3 of the 4 boot-up choices, below what I think is the F Drive device.

A complete pain in the proverbial ....

Just wondering - would an upgrade in memory or processing capacity help?

Answers on a postcard, please, preferably in English ....

[Suff]

Hi Ossie,

I would say that your boot manager is trying to boot from the usb key, which I assume it see's some kind of bootable info on, then fails. Did you try removing it when booting?

Also going into the firmware and changing the boot order then saving it is useful. Just forcing it to boot to another drive without locking in the changes will repeat every reboot.

On the hardware and how it is doing, you can check with task manager to see how stressed your system is. You can see at the top of the Process tab what levels of stress it is under. You can also look at the performance tab.

There are two upgrades which benefit older machines. In fact #2 son didn't believe the performance boost of a SSD until I put one in his machine. The fist is RAM. If you are anywhere over 70% it is swapping. Once it starts swapping, if you are on a hdd as opposed to SSD, then it is death by head thrashing. The second is replacing the HDD with a SSD.

However if you are also pushing your CPU to the limits, then either a CPU upgrade or a new machine.

CPU upgrades can be viable and not too expensive but unless you are totally 100% and your upgrade path is 2x or 3x performance, it won't be that big a deal. RAM and SSD are the bigger step. SSD if you are on HDD is always a big boost. RAM if you are swapping is another big boost but limited. Once you get out of swapping you are still bogged down by the HDD.

Mrs S has an old laptop which I bought whilst waiting for my Alienware to arrive. It is a Dell 17" non business machine. It was a pentium model with 2GB of RAM and a pitifully slow HDD. I bought it, stripped it from new, put in 8GB of RAM and a Core i5 processor (the fastest it would take), then a SSD. Over 11 years later it is still pretty fast.

If you want WM and I can vet what you have and give you options.

[Workingman]

Before I even got down to your last few paragraphs my thoughts were that the boot order had been changed by Windows update(s). It will normally default to the initial setup.

You could try using F2 and make some changes, say make the optical drive #1, HDD #2 and reboot making sure there is no disc in the CD / DVD drive. Then go back and make the changes you really want and exit saving the changes - make sure to do this. HDD should be at #1. It might work.

The freezing is probably memory related - page file or RAM. Installing more RAM is easy and so is resetting the page file. Page file first as it costs nothing.

The page file acts like RAM when things are hectic so that pressure can be taken off physical RAM, but it is slower. You can change its size for better performance:

Search for Advanced System Settings. Go the Advanced tab then to Performance and then Settings. In the new screen go to Advanced again then Virtual Memory and click Change, but first make a note of the existing paging file allowed for all drives. In the new window at the top Automatically manage paging file.... should be ticked. In the bottom half you will see System managed size - this will be ticked. In there you will see what the minimum, recommended and current figures are.

If you current allowance is lower than the recommended you can force it up.

Untick the Automatically allowed at the top. Tick Custom size. Set the Initial size to that recommended by the System and use the same number as Maximum and OK your way out. You can always undo it if things don't work.

Another, older, page file problem was it getting full and getting stuck. To clear most of it in the Custom section set Initial to 10 and Max to 15 and reboot then go back and set things as above.

Installing more RAM is straight forward. The banks only fit one way and a good click tells you it is seated properly.

[Suff]

Just to add info.

For disk cloning I used to use Acronis Trueimage home for which I have paid. But Aome backupper free version also works.

My first update before RAM, unless the RAM is crazy low, is the SSD. The gain is huge.

[TheOstrich]

Thanks folks.

Having re-set the boot order, I do ensure I save the changes before exiting, but a month or so later, I get a repeat of the problem ....

I'll have a look at your other suggestions for performance improvement, but at the end of the day, this thing must be pushing 16 years old now, so a new "box" probably beckons ......

Apologies for hijacking the thread!

[Workingman]

Crikey, if it really is that old it must have originally been a quite high end Vista 64 bit machine, then to W 7, skipped W8 / 8.1 (most of us did) then on to W 10.

If you get a new "box" or a laptop with W11 and an SSD you will be blown away by the speed upgrade. Deals around £400 - 450 for a 15.6" screen, 8 GB of RAM and a 256 SSD with W11 pre-installed are to be had but still rare - try a search. A cheaper option is a W 10 machine which is upgrade ready, just get the store bod to check it live in Windows update.

[TheOstrich]

Crikey, if it really is that old it must have originally been a quite high end Vista 64 bit machine, then to W 7, skipped W8 / 8.1 (most of us did) then on to W 10.

If you get a new "box" or a laptop with W11 and an SSD you will be blown away by the speed upgrade. Deals around £400 - 450 for a 15.6" screen, 8 GB of RAM and a 256 SSD with W11 pre-installed are to be had but still rare - try a search. A cheaper option is a W 10 machine which is upgrade ready, just get the store bod to check it live in Windows update.

Yes it really is that old, early 2000's. Leastways, I've found files in Excel dating back that far.

I think it may have started as Windows XP? It has been upgraded through the years up to Windows 10 (Windows 8 was indeed skipped) .....
Settings describes it as a 64 bit operating system, x64-based processor.

Should I be donating it to a museum?

[Suff]

At this age you hit limiting factors.

It would be useful to know if it is DDR2 or Ddr3 RAM and also if it is SATA2 or 3.

These are critical factors. Current RAM standard is DDR4 and 2 has limits in size, 8GB I think. I bought some single 32GB DDR4 dimms recently.

SATA3 is fast enough to get the best out of a Ssd but the current Nvme standard is 4 times faster or more. SATA2 tops out at 300MB/s 3 is 600 and NVME is now up to 4,000. Your rotating drive is likely to be 25 - 90 at that age.

As I recall the standards for XP were Low. 4Gb ram and rarely 1Tb of drive. Video graphics were incredibly poor and very few could deal with W7. In fact if I recall correctly the PCIe was 1.0 then. Making performance at the motherboard level an issue too.

Your upgrade options may be very limited and you may not be spending wisely to upgrade now.

I'm assuming a desktop? Laptops from that era rarely made the upgrade cut.