Add severall WIM's to a USB Drive

[Guppy]

Hey Folks! 

First of all, thank you very much for your great Tool, I really think it will help me with my project. 

I want to add several Windows Installations (install.wim) on an external harddrive and choose which one shall be booted. I edited the Win 10 bcd-file like this:

Now the external Harddrive won't even offer me the Boot Menu, but just restarts over and over again. 

What is wrong and what can I do to fulfill my dream? 

Thanks in advance for all suggestions and your help! 

[boyans.net]

Hi,

you have put following path for wim:

[boot]\x86\Windows_7_x86\sources\boot.wim

which means - find on [boot] partition file "\x86\......\boot.wim"

but you say Windows 10 BCD is used to store this loaders which is on another disk and its [boot] partition is the active partition on that disk!

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[boot] partition = disk from which you start boot process and then active partition on that disk.

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For a wim file the exact location of its sdi device is stored in its corresponding device object 

which is addressed  by the {GUID} that comes after the comma (from your attached picture = {bef16......}

in its Application device element (pretty complex isn't it?)

Currently its not very easy to create a wim loader with any public version of Visual BCD Editor, but its possible ;)

Next version (0.9.4) can create wim loaders on click, BUT it is NOT AVAILABLE for public download YET. Sorry.

Following images are a Win 10 recovery (wim) loader and its corresponding device object: 

On UEFI firmware - path ends with winload.efi !

Partition is not mapped to a drive letter.

To fix your existing wim loader just map external disk/partition to a drive letter, then change [boot] (in Application + OS device) to that drive letter,

fix also sdiDevice in corresponding device object!

Then you can copy(with bcdedit) the loader and again fix devices for next wim, and so on.

(And yes, next version of VBCDE can also copy objects ;)

To add loader to boot menu - add its {GUID} in {bootmgr}DisplayOrder. 

That would be all.

Not quite - elements "BootUxDisplayMessage" and "BootMenuPolicy" are defined only for Windows 8 and later!

Do not put in a Windows 7 normal/recovery/wim loader!

Cheers.

[Guppy]

Good evening! 

Wow,first of all thanks alot for the very thorough and informative post! I have to admit I didn't quite get what you told me and due to a mistake I made, my BCD crashed and.. well it's gone. 

Now instead of trying to fix my old one I'd like to build a BCD from scratch. Do you have a tutorial which explains what I have to do? To clear things up here a thumbnail sketch of what I want to do:

My idea is to create an external harddrive which contains several installable windows Versions. Win 7, 8.1 and 10, each 64 and 32 bit versions. The external HDD shall be plugged into a computer and this shall boot from it. I want to be able to choose from a list which Insallation should start. Now I just want to install the chosen OS the usual way like i would do from a single USB stick. 

The root of the HDD contains 2 Folders, one named "x64", the other "x86". Each Folder contains several OS like this: 

The folders contain the extracted ISO of the respective OS, so each includes the sources Folder and the install.wim.  

I hope I made myself clear and that my idea is possible. English isn't my mother tongue, so please excuse misunderstandings. 

You just told me that I have to watch out for specials regarding Win 7. Is there an overview which ones these are and if there a special requirements for Win 8.1 and Win 10? 

Ah yes, I almost forgot.  if allthis works I also want to install a portable Windows on the Harddrive, so I can boot crashed computers, without formatting them. I'm not sure how this will work and if it works, but if it's possible, how can I include this into the BCD? 

Thanks in advance for your answers and please excuse if I will have to ask follow-up questions

have a nice eveing!