Windows To Go UEFI & BIOS compatible Deployment Guide

[TPreston]

1 hour ago, WIRM.KJones said:

Okay, so I took the risk and went ahead with the rest of the guide. But I got to the point where it says "Complete OOBE" 

What does that mean? 

Enter the PC name etc and then install whatever programs you need.

Once you have that done its ready to use on the surface pro

[WIRM.KJones]

Would it be possible to install windows on two drives in a striped (raid 0) array using this method?

[adnanbcs]

On 7/3/2015 at 1:38 AM, TPreston said:

I was recently asked how to setup a Windows To Go installation that can boot from both UEFI and BIOS PCs with non certified devices.

 

All the guides I found to do this online are compatible with either BIOS or UEFI but not both.

 

The reason is because compatibly with both needs 2 partitions so most usb keys wont work

 

 

So you need either a USB HDD or a USB Key that shows up as a Fixed Disk.

 

If you cant get your device to pass-through into HyperV its not a Fixed Disk and wont work

 

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2008/10/24/configuring-pass-through-disks-in-hyper-v.aspx

 

Im going to test this using HyperV the only difference between this and creating a real device is changing the drive letters and numbers in diskpart.

 

 

Start by creating two VMs a Gen 1 and a Gen 2 VM both with the same VHD File

 

 

Now boot from the Windows CD on the Gen1 VM as the Gen2 VM will complain about not installing to a GPT disk.

 

 

At the install screen press shift + f10 to open command prompt and run notepad to get a GUI file explorer window when you select file > open

 

 

Convert the disk to MBR format and create 2 partitions a Fat32 system partition marked as active and a NTFS windows partition.

 

 

Apply any windows image to the windows partition

 

 

Which creates the standard windows folder structure

 

 

Use the BCDBOOT command to copy the boot files for both UEFI and BIOS computers from the Windows partition to the Fat32 system partition

 

 

Eject the windows iso and let the Windows To Go drive boot.

 

 

Complete OOBE

 

 

Install whatever software you need

 

 

Shutdown to test the image on a UEFI Secure Boot PC

 

 

Start-up the UEFI PC and the Windows To Go drive boots

 

 

The same user profile now starts up on an entirely different articheture.

 

Code used

 

diskpart
select disk 0
clean
convert mbr 
create partition primary size=350
format quick fs=fat32 label="System"
Active
assign letter="S" 
create partition primary
format quick fs=ntfs label="Windows To Go"
assign letter="W"
exit

Dism /apply-image /imagefile:E:\sources\install.wim /index:1 /ApplyDir:W:\

bcdboot w:\Windows /s S: /f ALL

Sources

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-ie/library/jj592685.aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-ie/library/hh825677.aspx

So great post and thank you so much it is very help full and so easy.

i got stuck at this command with error 2

Dism /apply-image /imagefile:X:\sources\install.wim /index:1 /ApplyDir:W:\

 

then i noticed with new version of windows 10 install.wim is changed with install.esd

 

then the command is working for me is below

Dism /apply-image /imagefile:X:\sources\install.esd /index:1 /ApplyDir:W:\

 

Maybe it help someone

Thanks again