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Last edited by Volume Z; 24 Aug 2022 at 20:24.
i need to do a re-install on a dell laptop but no disk as i got laptop 2nd i dont no how or what im doing as it woz why i got a 2nd to learn , if a shop dos it wot kind of cost am i looking at it as windows 7 on but needs clean windows reset/reinstall so prob not to hard or take long for somebody who no’s how , just dont want to over pay ….Thank you hope woz ok put this here still getting to no my way round this site
Many bios will only look for a fat32 partition if using efi boot.Can I ask "why format the USB flash drive to Fat32
Split install.wim into smaller Install.swm files.
DISM - Split install.wim file | Tutorials
That might be a reason I am having such an issue booting to a bootable flash drive. I did try the split wim but burned 2 DVDs rather than trying with a flash drive again. There didn't seem to be enough instructions on using the split wim and how to actually write to a device so I was just experimenting at the time.
What makes this more confusing however is the same flash drive(formatted NTFS) that fails on one motherboard works perfectly on another one.
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Those instructions seem a little complex and outdated if using a more modern software such as Rufus to create the flash drive. What is the proper procedure? I have just created a new Installer/WIM and used the Wim-split.cmd to split the WIM into smaller files. So do you now use ISO-Create.cmd to create the ISO and point to both WIM files?
Sorry if I seem dense. lol I'm honestly a power user. A few weeks ago I actually used Split-wim-to-2-ISOs to create the installer on 2 DVDs. I'm just trying to wrap my head about the 2 options Split-WIM vs Split-wim-to-2-isos.
And reading a little further into creating a Fat32 flash drive installer.
Windows can be installed in two ways: Legacy-MBR or UEFI-GPT
To install as Legacy-MBR you must boot the installation drive as Legacy
To install as UEFI-GPT you must boot the installation drive as UEFI.
If you have a UEFI BIOS, you should install as UEFI-GPT.
To boot as UEFI, the boot manager must be on a Fat32 partition (to be universal) as BIOS will look a boot manager on a Fat32 partition to transfer the boot sequence. As Fat32 has a file size limit of 4G, bigger Install.wim must be split ed into smaller swm files or the Install.wim placed on a separated NTFS partition (done by Rufus).
The problem is that all windows prior to Win 10 only recognize one partition on removable flash drives.
In other words, a boot able USB Win 7 installation drive must be formatted as Fat32 (to be able to boot as Legacy or UEFI) and big Install.wim must be split ed into smaller swm files.
So I kinda gave up on creating a bootable flash drive that worked and just used the created ISO burned to a DL DVD. There was no option for UEFI using the DVD but went along with the boot option that was there. Win7 installed fine however upon the initial reboot to finish the installation the USB mouse/keyboard no longer worked so couldn't add any info like user name, etc. I tried using both USB 3 and USB 2 ports. This motherboard has no USB 2.0 ports on the backplane i/o.
And another thing during the install the NVMe drives did not show up to install to. I had already connected a SATA SSD to install to so that worked. My intent here was to simply install to the SATA drive then Clone the SATA drive to an onboard NVMe drive.