Cannot Boot From Recovery Media

Common recommendations:

• Your BIOS/UEFI firmware version must be most current. It can be downloaded from your motherboard/laptop manufacturer’s website.
• Your firmware must be configured to boot from CD/DVD or USB, depending on Recovery Media format you use. For details, check your motherboard manual.
• Make sure you’ve created appropriate Recovery Media type (BIOS or UEFI) for your hardware.

Typical issues

Black screen

Linux recovery media could have incompatibility with some hardware on some laptops. Black screen usually means it’s not compatible with current video adapter.

Sometimes this issue can be fixed by changing video adapter settings in BIOS (if available).

But in most cases using WinPE recovery media instead should help because of wider range of supported hardware and ability to load additional device drivers in the media builder wizard.

Blinking cursor

If you encounter black screen with blinking cursor in top right corner, it usually means there was a failed attempt to boot from the selected device. Some manufacturers use specific boot configuration that’s different from default partitioning schemes.

Please try creating the WinPE media by the following way:

1. Create ISO image instead of burning it directly to USB drive
2. Run the product
3. Delete any partitions on USB drive (leave only Unallocated space).
4. Run Tools – Recovery Media Builder
5. Select Flash memory then “Use specified image” and select ISO image from step 1
6. Burn USB media and try to boot from it

You can also try re-formatting the USB flash disk to FAT32 before creating the recovery media.

BSOD

If you encounter a system crash into the blue screen, pay attention to the text appearing in “technical information”, and the error code in 0x######## format. Different error codes show different crash reasons.

Please refer to this Microsoft Knowledge Base article to get additional troubleshooting steps.

You may search online to get additional info regarding the particular error code, or send it to support team in addition to your request (Please also attach the full memory dump or minidump file).

Also you can try using the Linux boot media.

If you’re using UEFI system, please try temporarly disabling UEFI boot, then create Linux (BIOS) media.

Input devices (mouse/keyboard) don’t work

If you encounter this issue after booting from Linux-based recovery media, it’s because not all hardware is supported by default Linux/DOS recovery media.

In case of using WinPE-based media, you can add the neccessary device drivers during creating recovery media in advanced mode.

This also relates to using USB devices connected to USB 3.0 ports – you have to add the USB 3.0 controller drivers or use ADK instead of WAIK, or use USB 2.0 ports instead.

Network not started

You boot from a recovery media that’s been configured to use network, and get the following message:

This may occur when either the network cable is disconnected, or the network device lacks corresponding drivers added to recovery media environment. Please make sure the cable is connected, and all neccessary device drivers are added during creating recovery media in advanced mode.

Or you can just press Cancel to continue loading without network.

OTHER CASES

Some motherboards (such as Gigabyte GA-890) are reported to recognize the USB disk as hard disk drive, so when trying to select USB device, it will not boot. To boot from the disk, select it from list of available Hard Drives.

RMB: Linux, RMB: WinPE
Tags: boot, bsod, problem, recovery media, troubleshooting

Loading...