Windows 98 Boot File

[Elisabetta Buendia]

Thistopic covers how to manually create a Windows installation flash drive from Windows installation ISO disc image file or DVD, and is intended for manufacturers looking into creating media that they can use to manufacture Windows devices.

The steps described on this page assume you have Windows installation media and access to a Windows technician PC. If you're looking for an easy, automated way to create a bootable Windows installation flash drive, see:

Our organization has started using Azure AD and Intune for managing PCs, and the enrollment include the deployment of Cortex XDR client. So far, we've had no issues during our (slow but surely) transition.

But last week I encountered a strange problem where we got the new Dell Precision 5560 for a new employee.

Login with credentials - successfully enroll to Intune, and everything is seemingly fine entering Desktop. Initiate Windows update and a reboot is required. Then when booting and loading Windows, the Dell logo is the last thing we see followed by pitch black screen, and Automatic Repair is kicked off after a few cycles.

Few hours spent later, I manage to evade the boot problems, and the reason is that I've disabled Cortex XDR client to be automatically installed. At some point, I also tried a manual install which had the same results.

Has anyone encountered similar issues?

As mentioned, this has worked without problems until now, and the last PC I enrolled was a Precision 5550.

Could there be an issue with the new components of the P5560 and its drivers, or is it just a coincidence?

No, never got as far as creating a ticket as I was swamped with other stuff, and since this PC was not to be used before september (luckily), it was not prioritized until a week or two after I wrote the post. A new version of XDR was available (7.4.0 if I'm not mistaken), and that did not trigger the issues.

The version that seemed to be the cause for me was 7.2.2.

Which version are you running?

I have a Windows 10 Laptop booting in EFI mode. I currently have Windows 10 and Linux Mint installed. I want to be able to boot into Linux mint from Windows Boot Manager. The thing is, I kind of deleted the Boot Entry for it, because it wasn't working anyway. (It was, but the computer didn't show a boot manager, just booted straight into Windows) And now I have a Linux Mint install without any sort of Boot Entry to boot into it. I think I'm good, because the "ubuntu" directory in the EFI partition still exists, along with grubx64.efi. Now what I need to have:

I know this HAS to do with BCD, I tried EasyBCD, that doesn't work with UEFI Boot, I tried Visual BCD Editor, couldn't for the heck find out how that works, and now I'm just stuck with it only booting straight into Windows.

There was a comment to original question stating Windows Boot Manager cannot boot to linux. This is FUD. I have done it with Windows 8. I wasn't able to get the pretty screen like you see in the attached pic, so I eventually went back to Grub.

In my exact case, I didn't get the GUI boot choice, instead it was the same menu as when you F8 as windows is starting. It looks similar to how you would choose Safe Mode, however it had Windows and Ubuntu listed.

I've got an HP Pavilion Touchsmart notebook that came with Windows 8. I've upgraded to 8.1, and now I want to dual-boot an Ubuntu distribution with Windows 10. When dual-booting with Windows 8.1, the Windows Boot Manager always took priority, even after installing GRUB. What do I need to do to get GRUB to be the default bootloader instead of Windows Boot Manager?

This is the longest post I've ever made on a StackExchange site, but this process requires a lot of explanation and attention to detail. It's also somewhat specific to the hardware in question, which requires more explanation.

After a lot of headache, two accidental hard drive reformattings, and lots of frustration with HP's buggy firmware implementation, I finally got Xubuntu and Windows 10 running nicely side-by-side. I've done this with Windows 10, but it should also work with Windows 8.1. Both of these newer operating systems use the new(ish) UEFI firmware system, instead of the traditional BIOS system, which is where most confusions with dual-booting seem to arise. I read lots of things from lots of places with instructions for dual-booting with a BIOS system, that talk about UEFI as if it's just a different kind of BIOS, or an optional layer between BIOS and an OS. UEFI and BIOS are not the same thing; a UEFI is not a BIOS, and a BIOS is not a UEFI. They're completely different. There are some things that need to be done differently when dual-booting with a UEFI system.

Firstly, do not use EasyBCD. I've seen a lot of outdated dual-booting tutorials that recommend EasyBCD, but it is designed to work with traditional BIOS firmware used by Windows 7 and Windows Vista, and it does not work well with newer UEFI firmware (Windows 8, 8.1, or 10). If you have already fiddled with EasyBCD, don't worry- the worst it probably did is make a mess in your EFI boot entries by writing things to the MBR. We'll clean that up in step 4. Speaking of MBR, avoid that like the plague. The Master Boot Record is what's used in traditional BIOS firmware as a list of bootloaders stored in the boot partition (or, if written by Windows, in whichever partition is first) of your hard drive. It's meant to list the operating systems on the hard drive, and tell the firmware which one gets booted first. This does not work well with HP's UEFI firmware. It seems that if there's any MBR modification done, HP's UEFI firmware gets confused and runs back to the Windows Boot Manager, which will completely bypass GRUB.

Back up all of your Windows files and folders that you don't want to lose. As long as you have enough free hard drive space for your new Ubuntu partition, this process should not interfere with Windows files. Should is a risky word, though.

Windows 8.1 has a "make a recovery disk" tool, but I found it useless and non-functional when it came to restoring the backup I made with it. The most straightforward way to preserve the files you don't want to lose is to just open Windows Explorer, and copy them to a backup disk. It takes forever, but it's worth it.

It's very important to disable Fast Startup before installing GRUB, because whether the Ubuntu installer can detect Windows' presence depends on how Windows represents itself in the boot partition. With Fast Startup properly disabled, it should be detected. Detection will be covered in step 4.

Windows 8, 8.1, and 10 use this fancy new thing called Fast Startup, which tells your firmware to load a special bootloader that restores the system to its pre-shutdown state very quickly. Pretty cool, huh? Well, because it changes the EFI system's next-boot option, this feature will have to be disabled while you're installing GRUB. This can be done by doing the following:

More detailed instructions can be found here. You can re-enable Fast Startup after installing GRUB, and it seems not to cause any problems with Ubuntu/GRUB booting. Just make sure it's disabled during the installation.

After you've disabled Fast Startup, shut down your computer. Since Fast Startup is disabled, Windows will do a complete shutdown, and not change the next-boot option in the firmware's EFI manager. (Layman's terms: Windows won't tell your HP system to boot its Fast Startup file when it's next turned on, so it will use the EFI boot manager's list, as it should. GRUB will place itself first on this list.)

*Make sure you've got a backup. No guarantees- this depends on what Windows has decided to do in your boot partition, and it may also depend on which Ubuntu version/distribution you're using- I haven't used them all.

To make the partitions, you need to boot to your live CD/USB, and open gparted. There are plenty of tutorials on using gparted, and it's pretty easy to figure out, so I'll leave the specifics up to you and the Internet.

A boot partition. If you already have Windows installed, you shouldn't need to do anything- it should already be one of the first partitions in your drive. Sometimes Windows also makes another small partition at the beginning of the disk called Recovery. Just leave this alone.

A Windows partition. Again, if you already have Windows installed, this partition should obviously be here, after the boot and Recovery partitions. This is where you want it, but you need to resize it to make room for your Ubuntu partition, and the linux-swap partition. Use gparted's resize/move option to do this. Ubuntu needs at least 5 GB, and the linux-swap partition should be at least half the size of your physical RAM, so Resize the windows partition to make enough room for that. gparted will warn you about potential data loss- shrinking your partition should not destroy or corrupt any data, as long as you don't shrink it down into the space being used.

Whether you're upgrading to Windows 10 from an existing Windows OS, or installing both Windows 10 and an Ubuntu distribution to a new or newly-repartitioned hard drive, it's a lot easier to install Ubuntu first. Ubuntu uses GRUB 2 as its bootloader, which does things the way an EFI bootloader should. Windows 10 uses Windows Boot Manager, which does things... well, the way Windows does them... If you install Windows first, you likely won't be able to boot to Ubuntu without holding down a special key during the boot process to stop the Windows Boot Manager from loading, because Windows Boot Manager doesn't respect GRUB when it's added to its list of bootloaders. So instead, install Ubuntu and GRUB first, then add an entry to GRUB for the Windows Boot Manager.

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