Please help me solve new BIBM/Win 10 Install Weirdness?
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2018 1:09 am
If anyone can help me resolve this new weird problem, it's you folks here at Terabyte! And that's not flattery, since Brian and others have gone far beyond the call of duty for me in the past. I absolutely LOVE BootIt BM! It's an exceptionally great product that has served me well for a very long time. Hooray and thanks to you brilliant software engineers!
But I need help. Again. Badly.
Current Issue: Installing 64-bit Windows 10 1809 (with the new fixes from Microsoft) has been plagued with inexplicable problems that are threatening to drive me nuts!
I'm trying to install that version of Win 10 on a home-built desktop computer whose hardware works great, and has OS's that have been working extremely well until recently. It's always been a dual boot system with 64-bit Windows 7 Pro and 64-bit Windows 10 Pro, but I almost always use Win 10. But after a successful install, I can't get it to boot properly this time, although I've made it work in the past.
History: My Windows 10 OS suddenly became effectively dysfunctional, even though Avira and MBAM found no malware anywhere, and SFC found no corruptions. So after several repair attempts failed, I decided to install Win 10 from scratch. This seemed the best time to swap two computers, both home-built using the same mobo: An ASUS Z87-A. I wanted to swap the two boxes because over time, I found I was demanding more and more of the one with the less powerful CPU, an i5, while that with the more powerful i7 had much lower demands. Also, the i7 box was better suited to the location I wanted. Since they both had the same mobo and same operating systems, I didn't anticipate any problems due to the swap (aside from possible Microsoft activation issues). This is because although I swapped machines, I did NOT swap any disk drives -- so the operating systems and applications and other data disks remained where they were. And this seems to have worked fine (and I still think so).
So I used various Windows prep tools to pre-customize and debloat the installation media. But the MSMG ToolKit eventually failed because I had to run it under Windows 7, so I tried WinToolkit. That didn't work properly either, so I reluctantly purchased a home license of NTLite, which successfully produced a customized Win 10 1809 install ISO.
My first attempt of installing it didn't pan out because I installed it on an EMBR disk (because I had pre-planned to use BIBM). But after I disabled BIBM and converted the disk back to a standard MBR disk (an SSD), the installation appeared to work correctly. But when I then changed the disk back to EMBR and re-activated BIBM (partitions limited to 4 primaries), the Partition Work function complained that there was no BCD, a problem I've run into too many times. MY QUESTION ONE: Is it normal that the Installation of Windows 10 does NOT create a BCD Store?
So I booted to Windows 7 and ran the BCDEDIT commands to create a BCD store on the new Win 10 partition. Then I re-installed BIBM v1.52
But when I rebooted into BIBM on the Win 10 disk for the first time, I noticed that although I could successfully correct the top item in the Partition Work page for all parameters, when I selected the second radio button, there were only two entries: Windows Boot Manager and the same item from radio button one. In other words, there were no entries for Resume or Recovery or Memory testing. With all previous BCD stores for both Win 10 and Win 7, all of them were present, so this is MY QUESTION TWO: Did I do something wrong in the BCDEDIT commands to produce this unusual situation? What are the recommended command sequence?
So after completing the Partition Work and creating the required Boot Menu item and rebooting then selecting the new Boot menu item, I got an error message complaining the NTLDR is missing. MY QUESTION THREE: What did I do wrong that produced this error message?
At this point, my memory has failed me. I don't recall what error message I saw on the next boot attempt, but I THINK I got a message about finding no operating system to boot. I THINK the next thing I did was to locate instructions to use the BOOTSECT command, which I entered under Windows 7 elevated cmd line, as follows: Bootsect /nt60 SYS x: (where I substituted the Win 10 volume's drive letter for "x").
But that still didn't allow me to boot into Windows 10 using BIBM.
So, MY QUESTION FOUR (cumulative): WHAT IS THE CORRECT PROCEDURE to install Windows 10 on a standard MBR partition, CREATE a correct BCD store, then install BIBM, change the disk to EMBR, then set up BIBM to boot this new Windows 10 installation? Obviously, I must have screwed up somewhere, even though I've done this for Windows 7 many times without any problems, and apparently also did so for Windows 10 in the past (but I no longer recall what I did for Windows 10 in the past).
I don't think I'd have needed to ask for so much help if it were not for the inexplicable total absence of a BCD store after installing windows. I sincerely apologize for my stupidity!
THANK YOU!!
But I need help. Again. Badly.
Current Issue: Installing 64-bit Windows 10 1809 (with the new fixes from Microsoft) has been plagued with inexplicable problems that are threatening to drive me nuts!
I'm trying to install that version of Win 10 on a home-built desktop computer whose hardware works great, and has OS's that have been working extremely well until recently. It's always been a dual boot system with 64-bit Windows 7 Pro and 64-bit Windows 10 Pro, but I almost always use Win 10. But after a successful install, I can't get it to boot properly this time, although I've made it work in the past.
History: My Windows 10 OS suddenly became effectively dysfunctional, even though Avira and MBAM found no malware anywhere, and SFC found no corruptions. So after several repair attempts failed, I decided to install Win 10 from scratch. This seemed the best time to swap two computers, both home-built using the same mobo: An ASUS Z87-A. I wanted to swap the two boxes because over time, I found I was demanding more and more of the one with the less powerful CPU, an i5, while that with the more powerful i7 had much lower demands. Also, the i7 box was better suited to the location I wanted. Since they both had the same mobo and same operating systems, I didn't anticipate any problems due to the swap (aside from possible Microsoft activation issues). This is because although I swapped machines, I did NOT swap any disk drives -- so the operating systems and applications and other data disks remained where they were. And this seems to have worked fine (and I still think so).
So I used various Windows prep tools to pre-customize and debloat the installation media. But the MSMG ToolKit eventually failed because I had to run it under Windows 7, so I tried WinToolkit. That didn't work properly either, so I reluctantly purchased a home license of NTLite, which successfully produced a customized Win 10 1809 install ISO.
My first attempt of installing it didn't pan out because I installed it on an EMBR disk (because I had pre-planned to use BIBM). But after I disabled BIBM and converted the disk back to a standard MBR disk (an SSD), the installation appeared to work correctly. But when I then changed the disk back to EMBR and re-activated BIBM (partitions limited to 4 primaries), the Partition Work function complained that there was no BCD, a problem I've run into too many times. MY QUESTION ONE: Is it normal that the Installation of Windows 10 does NOT create a BCD Store?
So I booted to Windows 7 and ran the BCDEDIT commands to create a BCD store on the new Win 10 partition. Then I re-installed BIBM v1.52
But when I rebooted into BIBM on the Win 10 disk for the first time, I noticed that although I could successfully correct the top item in the Partition Work page for all parameters, when I selected the second radio button, there were only two entries: Windows Boot Manager and the same item from radio button one. In other words, there were no entries for Resume or Recovery or Memory testing. With all previous BCD stores for both Win 10 and Win 7, all of them were present, so this is MY QUESTION TWO: Did I do something wrong in the BCDEDIT commands to produce this unusual situation? What are the recommended command sequence?
So after completing the Partition Work and creating the required Boot Menu item and rebooting then selecting the new Boot menu item, I got an error message complaining the NTLDR is missing. MY QUESTION THREE: What did I do wrong that produced this error message?
At this point, my memory has failed me. I don't recall what error message I saw on the next boot attempt, but I THINK I got a message about finding no operating system to boot. I THINK the next thing I did was to locate instructions to use the BOOTSECT command, which I entered under Windows 7 elevated cmd line, as follows: Bootsect /nt60 SYS x: (where I substituted the Win 10 volume's drive letter for "x").
But that still didn't allow me to boot into Windows 10 using BIBM.
So, MY QUESTION FOUR (cumulative): WHAT IS THE CORRECT PROCEDURE to install Windows 10 on a standard MBR partition, CREATE a correct BCD store, then install BIBM, change the disk to EMBR, then set up BIBM to boot this new Windows 10 installation? Obviously, I must have screwed up somewhere, even though I've done this for Windows 7 many times without any problems, and apparently also did so for Windows 10 in the past (but I no longer recall what I did for Windows 10 in the past).
I don't think I'd have needed to ask for so much help if it were not for the inexplicable total absence of a BCD store after installing windows. I sincerely apologize for my stupidity!
THANK YOU!!