alt+254 Btw, does your UEFI system support legacy mode too? In such a case as with me would it be better to use Booti UEFI instead of Bootit BM?
That's brilliant. Ventoy now boots from the Normal BIBM Boot menu. I didn't delete the EFI folder either. It does support Legacy mode but I've disabled CSM. I only want to use UEFI mode. As I mentioned above, Ventoy boots from the BIU Boot menu in a UEFI system.
In BIU I tried two "Boot Files" in the Edit Menu Item... \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI \EFI\BOOT\grub.efi They both work.
From my camera screenshot you can see I'm booting TBWinRE and TBWinPE from a SSD. You can do this with most WinPE. I boot IFL from the SSD as it's faster to boot and a UFD isn't needed.
This is from a different computer showing several non Windows bootable partitions. Hiren, Strelec, etc.
mantra, that's correct. If you post a screenshot of Partition Work I can advise on resizing and restoring. But I don't use the Microsoft Boot menu. Others do.
I'm planning on one partition from where I can launch various bootable VHDs. Regularly backing up the partition would eventually involve doing a very large backup. I'm not sure what the best strategy would be to backup such a partition. I could just backup the BCD regularly and do the VHDs individually when they get updated or added. Anyone have a good scheme for doing this?
@Adric - Hasleo Backup Suite (Free) has a files'n'folder imaging mode that does Full/Differential/Incremental backup modes. I use it for disk imaging (Not F&F) and it works very well.
I am looking for something portable that will copy a partition to a mounted vhdx which I want to use later for booting. I can do this with drive snapshot, but I have to do a backup first and then a restore . I am looking for a more direct method. Any suggestions?
One of the first things I tried, but that includes more than just the partition in the VHD and doesn't work for what I want to do. I only want a VHD of the partition so I can add it to the boot menu, along with my other vhds.
@Brian K Hi Brian, can Booit UEFI be installed on an SSD flash drive? I want to boot the flash and use the BIUI menu from there for booting off the flash.
Adric, I don't have a SSD flash drive to test. I did try a SSD in a USB dock but BIU can't be installed. With BIU boot media, there is no Boot Manager. BIU has to be installed to the internal ESP for the Boot Manager to be available.
Brian, I downloaded the trial for Bootit UEFI and the install won't let you install on an external device, but I found a way around that by installing it on an internal HDD and copying the EFI partition from there to a spare USB stick. It actually boots to the UI, but I'm not that familiar with configuring the boot menu. if I format the 2nd partition how would I add something like a WIM, VHD in that partition to the boot menu and get it to boot?
Adric, That's an interesting test. You will have to keep testing as I've never seen anyone boot a wim or vhd using BIU. Maybe you will be the first.
I've already succeeded putting BIBM on a flash and booting wims, vhds from the flash via the BIBM menu on the flash, but that will only work on systems with CSM support. I thought I could do the same with BIUI, but no luck so far. making a BCD work.
You can boot VHDs and WIMs from BUI, but you have to use Windows Manager to do it. Booting from BUI boot menu installed on the USB FDD, I get the following windows menu and they all boot from that menu without problems. Since I did not have a spare internal drive to install BUI, putting it on a USB stick made it easier to test and compare it to the BIBM I have installed on my laptops' internal drive. I don't like the UEFI bootit direct menu because there is no information about the entries and what's behind them. You are basically forced to use the normal menu to add/see anything meaningful which is not the case with BIBM. Ventoy seems to be much better suited for removable drives than Bootit UEFI. The Ventoy entry you see does not work because I was trying to install it on a partition on the flash and boot it from there. So far, I get as far as a grub console, but no GUI.
Adric, Interesting results. Re the Direct Boot Menu. It is the same as the F12 BIOS Boot Menu. So if you have lots of "UEFI OS" entries in the BIOS Boot Menu, you will have the same entries in the Direct Boot Menu. I rarely use the Direct Boot Menu. I'll use it if I forgot to press F12 to boot a UFD. In the Normal Boot Menu, for Windows and Linux items, the Boot field is the ESP. The Boot File field is... \EFI\Microsoft.xxx\Boot\bootmgrfw.efi (for Windows and) \EFI\ubuntu.xxx\shimx64.efi (for Linux) For a WinPE, the Boot field is the WinPE partition and the Boot File field is \EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi. This is the EFI folder in the WinPE partition, not the EFI folder in the ESP. For my IFL boot item, the Boot field is the IFL partition and the Boot File field is \efi\boot\grubx64.efi Windows, Linux, WinPE and IFL are all on internal SSDs. The same or different SSDs. It doesn't matter. WinPEs boot much faster from a SSD than a UFD.
