No Boot Disc Windows 7
Mckenzie Witting
For those curious, it's possible to use a Mac to create a Windows 10 boot drive, but the process is fairly involved and requires familiarity with Terminal, the Mac's command-line tool. It's not a process that I'd recommend for the average user. I recently built my first gaming PC, and despite my mild comfort level with Terminal, I still found using a Windows computer to be a safer and easier process.
2. Once the download finishes, double-click the file called MediaCreationToolxxxx to run it. (The last four digits of the file name indicate the version number of Windows 10. Right now, the filename is MediaCreationTool21H1, but that will change as newer versions are released.) The file should be in your Downloads folder.
4. You'll be asked to select the language, edition and architecture you want to use. By default, the tool will use the best options for the PC you're creating the boot drive on. You can change any of the options by unchecking the box next to Use the recommended options for this PC and using the drop-down options. If you're unsure about whether you need a 64-bit or a 32-bit architecture, select Both from the Architecture drop-down.
Note, that according to Microsoft's support page, if you plan on using this tool to flash a different edition of Windows 10, such as Windows 10 Pro (or vice versa) on a different PC, it will be included when you select Windows 10 as the Edition. In fact, basic Windows 10 is the only option, so don't stress yourself looking for a Pro option.
6. Finally, select the USB drive from the list. If you have more than one drive connected to your computer and are unsure which one to pick, disconnect the extra drives. Picking the wrong drive could be catastrophic, as this process erases everything on the drive during the process. With the right drive selected, click Next.
Microsoft's tool will take care of the rest from there. Go get a drink, take a walk or browse the internet while the tool does its job. The process should take about 30 minutes, give or take, depending on your internet speed.
When the tool is done, click Finish and remove the USB drive from your computer. Going forward, if you need to install or reinstall Windows, you can connect the drive to your computer and reboot it. Your PC should boot to the drive, giving you the option to install Windows.
If it doesn't automatically boot to the drive, you'll need to reboot your computer into its BIOS firmware -- usually done by pressing Esc, F2, or a similar key while the computer is starting up -- and change the boot drive or "bootmenu" to your flash drive. The process for each computer (or motherboard if you're building a gaming PC) will be different. When you first turn on your computer, there'll be a small line of text telling you which button to press to enter BIOS. If you don't see it, or it goes away too fast, I suggest consulting your manual for instructions.
You can also use the media tool to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10, following these instructions. After getting Windows 10 installed, here are some tips to help get you started. If reinstalling Windows 10 feels like too much, use these tips to troubleshoot and speed it up.
I'm need to find a method to programmatically determine which disk drive Windows is using to boot. In other words, I need a way from Windows to determine which drive the BIOS is using to boot the whole system.
p.s. Just reading the first sectors of the hard disk isn't reveling anything. On my dev box I have two hard disks, and when I look at the contents of the first couple of sectors on either of the hard disks I have a standard boiler plate MBR.
Edit to clarify a few things.The way I want to identify the device is with a string which will identify a physical disk drive (as opposed to a logical disk drive). Physical disk drives are of the form "\\.\PHYSICALDRIVEx" where x is a number. On the other hand, a logical drive is identified by a string of the form, "\\.\x" where x is a drive letter.
Edit to discuss a few of the ideas that were thrown out.Knowing which logical volume Windows used to boot doesn't help me here. Here is the reason. Assume that C: is using a mirrored RAID setup. Now, that means we have at least two physical drives. Now, I get the mapping from Logical Drive to Physical Drive and I discover that there are two physical drives used by that volume. Which one did Windows use to boot? Of course, this is assuming that the physical drive Windows used to boot is the same physical drive that contains the MBR.
You can use WMI to figure this out. The Win32_BootConfiguration class will tell you both the logical drive and the physical device from which Windows boots. Specifically, the Caption property will tell you which device you're booting from.
2 and 3 should be easy to find - I'm not so sure about 1. Though you can raw disk read to find an MBR, that doesn't mean it's the BIOS boot device this time or even next time (you could have multiple disks with MBRs).
You really can't even be sure that the PC was started from a hard drive - it's perfectly possible to boot Windows from a floppy. In that case, both 1 and 2 would technically be a floppy disk, though 3 would remain C:\Windows.
On Windows 10.Open "Computer Management"Look for "Storage" in list "left top side of page"select "Disk Management"On section of page showing the list of disks and the partitions find the disk that has the partition assigned as drive C:On that disk containing C: partitionUse the right mouse button to select the Square section containing The Disk Number, Type of drive and size in GB . When menu opens select the Properties.A window will open showing what drive hardware was used.
I have an IBM 466 DX2 with the default CD-ROM drive installed like normal. I wanted to install Windows 95, so I first tried to install on top of the version of DOS already on the hard drive. It had the driver for the CD-ROM installed and booted into setup. Partway through setup, it detected a previous version of Windows on the hard drive, and said that I needed to get a Windows 95 upgrade. Of course, I wasn't going to find that, so I had DOS format the hard drive. I then tried to do a install with the boot floppy. When booted, it displays an Oak Technologies CD-ROM driver, but then says it doesn't find a CD-ROM drive and aborts. I need to find a driver that works with the Windows 95 boot disk so I can boot into setup.
From your pictures you have a CD-ROM manufactured by Matsushita for IBM with a model number of CR-563BBZ. This drive uses Matsushita's proprietary interface, so won't work with the the OAKCDROM.SYS driver which only supports CD-ROM drives using the IDE interface. It is however not connected to your sound card, its connected to it's own LaserMate CD-ROM interface card (labelled LMEP0084C). Your sound card is just behind it, it's the card with the silk screened CT2770 at the top.
I'm not sure if your LaserMate interface card needs its own drivers, or if it's compatible with the Matsushita interface card and so can use the Matsushita drivers. If it is compatible then what you need to do is copy CDMKE.SYS to the root directory of your boot floppy. You'll then need to add the following line to your CONFIG.SYS file:
However if it doesn't work the first time, then I would suggest disconnecting the CD-ROM drive from the interface card and connecting it to your sound card instead. The model number on the card, CT-2770, indicates that it's a Sound Blaster 16 Value which should also have Matsushita proprietary CD-ROM interface. You'd then need to change the line added to CONFIG.SYS above to:
Other numbers you can try with the /SBP: option are 240, 260, and 280. However your Sound Blaster 16 is very likely using port 220 and you can verify this by checking to see if the jumpers labelled IOS0 and ISO1 at the bottom middle of the board are both installed. If they're not both installed then it's using port 240 if ISO0 is not jumpered but ISO1 is jumpered, port 260 if ISO0 is jumpered but ISO1 is not jumpered, or port 280 if neither ISO0 nor ISO1 are jumpered.
I installed Windows 10 and enabled BitLocker.I started the Ubuntu installation, and, when asking to install side-by-side with Windows, I received a prompt that sent me to here: -installation-on-computers-running-windows-and-bitlocker-turned-on/15338/5
When I installed Windows, I intentionally left an unallocated partition at the end of the disk.Now I'm thinking to just "manually" tell the installer to install Ubuntu on it, but I'm not sure if I'll get the dual-boot screen this way.
My last concern is about encryption at the Ubuntu side. Will Ubuntu be able to encrypt only its own partition, and thus not affect my Windows installation, with the tool that comes with it? If not - perhaps someone can suggest an alternative tool that would allow that? (a commercial tool is also acceptable).
I have done a similar setup with Windows 10 and Ubuntu 18.04, following the instructions provided by Paddy Landau ( ). Mike Kasberg provides similar instructions for Ubuntu 20.04 ( -boot-ubuntu-and-windows-with-encryption.html).
Having done this, when you boot the machine, you'll be taken to the grub menu. If you choose Ubuntu, you'll be prompted for the disc-encryption passphrase. If you're not using BitLocker on your Windows partition, then you can alternatively boot into Windows from the grub menu. If you are using BitLocker, then you wont be able to go via grub - instead you'll need to go directly into booting Windows from the BIOS, typcially by pressing F12 when you start up.
When switching between the two operating systems, you must ensure you do a proper shut down. If you just do a hibernate (from Ubuntu), and then boot into Windows, you will find that the boot partition gets corrupted. Beware! The corruption can be fixed, but requires booting Ubuntu from a USB stick, and entering a dozen or so commands.
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