Return to site

Cannot Find Previous Windows Installations

broken image


Bootable USB is a media that contains everything required to boot Windows. Thus, you can use it to boot your computer, whether it's bootable or not, and then clean install a fresh copy of Windows, perform in-place upgrade to Windows 10 from previous version, or troubleshoot the computer in trouble. But sometimes you will find Windows 10 won't boot from USB drive, even no prompt, and don't know why, just like the following case.

Double-click on the C: drive and then navigate to the C: Windows.old Users folder if upgrading from Windows Vista or Windows 7 by double-clicking on the various sub folders that appear. After learning so much information about this issue, now you should find solutions if the PC is stuck at restoring your previous version of Windows after failed update. Fix Windows 10 Restoring Previous Version of Windows Loop. As to this issue, waiting is not useful and finding the solutions to restoring previous version of Windows loop is.

'I'm having problem with my Toshiba L875-S7308 where I cannot boot my USB while in UEFI mode.
I've formatted the USB (tried MBR and GPT - same result), and restored the ISO using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. When I try booting from USB, the laptop simply ignores it and continues booting Windows.
I'v tried changing boot order, or manually selecting USB with no positive result. It seems like it's not even recognizing it (it's not showing the USB's name in the boot menu).'

If you happen to encounter this situation or similar, you could stay for a while to learn more about Windows 10 bootable USB not working and then fix the error with given solutions. Also, you can choose to replace the corrupted or damaged bootable USB with a different way. Please click the anchor text to get what you want quickly.

Why Windows 10 bootable USB not working?

Windows 10 bootable USB not working may be caused by wrong boot mode, just change it to right one. Most of the old computer models supports Legacy BIOS while the modern computer like Windows 8/10 uses UEFI boot mode. Also, it's probably a problem of file system issue. Usually, BIOS boot mode requires NTFS file system while UEFI(CSM disabled) is FAT32. Also, there are other closely related situations about this issue.

  • Bootable USB is not detected as a boot device. This means your USB stick is either corrupted or unbootable itself, or USB boot is not supported on the computer.

  • Bootable USB not showing up in BIOS. This may happen because of incrrect boot order. By default, your computer only boot from the first boot option.

  • Bootable USB not showing up in boot menu. This is because your USB drive is old USB 1.0 or 2.0, which is not supported by Windows 10.

  • You can't boot from USB, even select the right boot option. In this case, the USB drive is likely to be damaged or corrupted. You may receive error message like 'no bootable devices found'.

And then, see below and follow the suggestions to fix Windows 10 boot from USB not working issue.

How do I know if my USB drive is bootable in Windows 10?

Sometimes the Windows boot USB not working is caused by computer configuration or the USB drive itself, so the first thing is to check if the USB drive is really bootable.

You need to test this bootable USB on another PC that supports booting from USB. If it's bootable, this may be a configuration issue. Also, you can use a different USB boot drive to boot from the current PC to check if the problem is caused by the USB drive.

To boot computer from the bootable USB, you can use Windows 10 quick boot menu 'Use a device' without changing the startup sequence in the BIOS. But if you cannot see this option in the recovery environment, please manually change boot order and then boot.

Boot from quick boot menu - Use a device

Step 1. Press and hold the 'Shift' key while clicking 'Restart' button. Then, your computer will reboot to the Advanced Startup Options screen, click 'Use a device'.

Step 2. Select the boot USB drive, wait and see if your computer boot from this drive.

Manually change boot order - set boot priority to USB drive

Step 1. Shutdown your computer and then start it.

Step 2. Press a specific key when you see a prompt at the first boot screen, like this, 'Press ESC to enter BIOS'. Also, if your computer is fast boot mode, you don't need to press any key.

Step 3. Go to the 'Boot' tab and use the up arrow to move the USB drive to the top.

Cannot find previous windows installations using
Previous

Step 4. Press 'F10' to save changes and restart your computer with USB dive. Ndis miniport driver tutorial.

Windows 10 not booting from USB - how to fix?

Before you start, you need to know that the USB drive is not a boot option in the previous computer, and then supported in the new system, such as, Windows 8/10. But if the flash drive itself is not actually bootable, your computer will try to find the next bootable device from the priority boot sequence in BIOS and then boot from it. This is why your computer continue to boot Windows without any prompts.

Then, continue to learn how to fix Windows 10 bootable USB is not working.

Fix 1: Make Sure the file system of USB drive is formatted as FAT32

Format the drive with NTFS file system if the computer is Legacy BIOS mode. Meanwhile, format your USB with FAT32 if your computer boot mode is UEFI.

Visit the Microsoft Store to download. Bring your music to mobile and tablet, too. Listening on your phone or tablet is free, easy, and fun. One account, listen everywhere. Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs. How to download spotify songs. Spotify premium allows you to download playlists for offline usage inside the Spotify client, you can do that by pressing the 'Download' slider at the top of the playlist. This means you will be able to listen to tracks when you don't have an internet connection.

To format the USB drive, please press 'Windows + E' to open file explore, right-click the USB drive and select 'Format', then select FAT32(Default) file system and click 'Start' to begin.

Also, you can format USB flash drive to FAT32 using Diskpart. To open it, run cmd as administrator, type diskpart in the command prompt, and input the following commands subseqently.

▪ list disk
▪ select disk n ('n' refers to the disk number of the USB flash drive that you want to format)
▪ list partition
▪ select partition m ('m' is the USB flash drive partition number)
▪ format fs=fat32 quick

Fix 2. Be sure the USB drive is set to be the first boot option

You can restart your computer, press the key (eg: F2, F11, ESC) on the first screen to enter BIOS, find out Boot Options or something like that and set boot priority to USB drive.

Note: If you cannot see the USB boot option, your computer may not support this option. You need to try different ways.

Fix 3. Enable CSM or Legacy boot mode, and disable Secure Boot Control

You can enter the BIOS screen and click Boot > Launch CSM and enable it. Next, click Security > Secure Boot Control and disable it.

Fix 4. Change UEFI or Legacy BIOS boot mode

You can enter BISO screen and click UEFI/BIOS Boot Mode or Launch Storage OpROM Policy, then select the right mode. If the bootable drive is FAT32, select UEFI. But if it's NTFS, please choose Legacy.

Fix 5: Create a bootable USB with Windows media creation tool

Up still now, if you don't fix Windows 10 bootable USB not detected or showing up via the given solutions, you can choose to create an installation disc with Windows 10 media creation tool provided by Microsoft's official website, or create a bootable USB drive with built-in recovery drive (for detailed steps, see Windows 10 recovery disk).

To create a bootable USB drive with media creation tool, you need to download it first and then launch, select 'Create installation media for another PC' and follow the on-screen instructions to complete this task.

Now, you may already fix this error and have a bootable USB drive, so you can start to check if you can boot from USB in Windows 10 and then repair Windows 10 with bootable USB. The following is a simple guide for you.

1. Connect the bootable USB and set boot priority in the BIOS.

2. After the Windows files loading is completed, click Next until you see 'Repair your computer' and tap on it.

3. Click 'Troubleshoot' -> 'Advanced options' and then you will see several recovery tools. You can select one among them and follow the instructions to start repair.

Also, you can install SSD on Windows 10 with bootable USB, but the steps are slightly different. After booting from USB, you click 'Install Now' instead of 'Repair your computer' on the first Windows Setup interface. Then, just follow the prompt of clean installation wizard.

Alternative bootable USB to protect data and system

Actually, bootable USB drive or installation media is designed to help you reinstall Windows or repair computer issues. But this process is painful, especially for the novices who are not familar with these operations, they may lose data due human errors. What's worse, reinstalling will remove everything on the system partition and leave only a clean system.

At this time, you may need a different kind of bootable USB, which can help you get your computer back with everything on it. To make it, you could consider using third-party media creation tool - AOMEI Backupper Standard. It is simple, easy, and more flexibly.

But what suprises me is its strong compatibility, to be specific, it supports all the file system including FAT32/FAT16/NTFS/EXT2 etc, and Windows system like Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista. You can create a bootable media with any kind of file system and use it to boot all of the Windows system without boot issue. And you don't need to create a repair boot drive for every computer anymore.

Well then, let's get started to create a universal bootable USB with AOMEI Backupper Standard.

Cannot Find Previous Windows Installation

Dbz zenkai battle download full. Step 1. Download AOMEI Backupper Standard, install and launch it. And then, click Create Bootable Media under the Tools tab.

Download Freeware

Win 10/8.1/8/7/XP

Secure Download

Except for bootable media creation, there is similar feature but it is more powerful, it's 'PXE boot tool(supported by AOMEI Backupper Workstation)'. It allows you to start multiple computers over network simultanously and then perform batch operations including backup, restore and maintainance, thereby saving a lot of time and effort for users with a large number of computers or small and medium-sized companies.

Step 2. Select Bootable Disc Type. It's recommended to select Windows PE. This option is suitable for everyone and offers you more operations than Linux.

Step 3. Select the boot mode for your disc and then click Next. If your computer is Legacy BIOS mode (system disk is of MBR partition style), you can tick Create legacy bootable disc. If not, you should tick Create UEFI bootable disc.

Step 4. Tick USB Boot Device and then click Next to move on.

Cannot Find Previous Windows Installations Download

Step 5. Wait for the process and click Finish when it reaches to 100%.

From now on, you don't need to worry about this issue 'computer won't boot from USB'. To make sure you can restore your computer to an earlier date, you still need to create a system backup or disk backup for your computer, which includes system partition and boot-related partition(s) to start Windows. Then, in the event of a disaster, you restore Windows 10 to new hard drive, even a computer with disimilar hardware restore.

Tip: If you don't have USB or CD/DVD, you could consider adding an entry to get into the recovery environment of AOMEI Backupper. Specifically, when you start your computer, you will see two entries, Windows 10(your current operating system), and enter into AOMEI Backupper. Click the later one, you can backup & restore, clone without booting into Windows.

Conclusion

That's all for Windows 10 bootable USB not working, you can choose to fix it with given solutions, or directly create a brand-new bootable USB to protect data and system on the computer. It saves the life of your computer even if it crashes. The premise is you have a working system image backup.

In a simple word, if you want to reinstall Windows 10 or repair it, the previous one is a better choice. But if you want a way to restore entire computer, including the system, all of personal data and programs, etc, you'd better use the latter one.

It not only helps you create universal bootable device, but protect your data and system by its poweful backup and restore features, such as, backup system/disk/partition/file, incremental & differential backup, USB plug in, daily/weekly/monthly schedule backup, sync files between computer and flash drive, etc.

Read this article about recovering your data after reinstalling the operating system: how to do it and what tools to use.Working in data recovery business for years, we are used to seeing emails such as this one:'My computer went wonky, so I decided to reinstall Windows. To make sure all the glitches are gone, I chose to reinstall from scratch on a new partition. After I installed Windows on my computer, all of my files are gone. I know that you guys have a bunch of data recovery tools. Is there a particular tool to help me recover my files? I tried your Hetman Uneraser, but it didn't find anything. Help?'

Windows 10 Previous Windows Installation

Indeed, using a simple undelete tool won't do much good to recover files, especially if you install it onto the same disk you're about to recover files from. But first let's see what happens when you reinstall Windows.

Contents:

  • Windows Refresh or New Installation?
  • How To Recover Data After Reinstalling Windows
  • Choosing a Data Recovery Tool
  • Special Case: SSD Drives

Windows Refresh or New Installation?

There are several ways to install Windows over your existing installation. You can choose to refresh (or repair) existing OS, which is generally a non-destructive process and should NOT affect your files in any way. This method only works if you are refreshing or repairing exactly the same version of Windows as you have now. By 'exactly' the same, I mean if you have a 32-bit Windows 7, you can't refresh it with a 64-bit version of the same Windows 7. It must be the same.

Sometimes you can upgrade your Windows installation to a new OS. With at least Windows 7, Windows 8 and 8.1 being around in 32-bit and 64-bit versions and numerous editions (Home, Professional, Ultimate, Bing and whatnot), there is a number of complicated rules affecting whether or not your existing system is upgradeable. For example, you cannot upgrade your 32-bit OS to a 64-bit version. If you install a 64-bit OS over 32-bit Windows, it will either boot side by side with your old 32-bit version, or perform a fresh install, potentially wiping your data.

While Microsoft will warn users multiple times before actually deleting partitions or reformatting existing volumes, apparently these warnings are often ignored just the way we ignore those multi-page End User License Agreements. This means data loss.

How To Recover Data After Reinstalling Windows

If you found yourself in a situation where you have a shiny fresh Windows but none of the documents, pictures and other files you had on that disk, you will need to be very careful not to make the situation worse.

First and most importantly, shut down your PC and take the disk out. You don't want running Windows on that same disk you are about to recover. You will need another computer to connect the disk to as a slave. Don't have another computer? Want to try recovering your files from within your new Windows install? Then most probably you either didn't have anything really important and worth recovering, or just don't care about your data at all. If you do, you will take your disk out and you will connect it to a PC running its own copy of Windows. (Or you can boot from a USB flash drive, of course, which is effectively the same. Just make sure you have a data recovery tool stored on that same USB flash drive).

Choosing a Data Recovery Tool

If you are about to recover files missing after reinstalling the operating system, a simple undelete tool won't cut it. The thing is, most undelete utilities will look up records in the file system, searching for traces of files and folders that are marked as deleted. However, after you reinstall Windows (especially if it was accompanied with repartitioning and/or reformatting the disk), the original file system is pretty much gone. There is nothing for traditional undelete tools to look up.

What you need is a universal tool used by data recovery specialists, such as Hetman Partition Recovery. This tool can analyze your physical hard drive in an attempt to discover the original partitions and file systems that were used by the old copy of Windows. If such partitions are discovered, they are then added to the list of volumes available for recovery.

But what if no trace of old partitions or file systems can be discovered? Even if this is the case, you can still recover many types of information such as documents (*.doc/*.docx, *.xls/*.xlsx, and several dozen other formats), pictures, videos, emails, calendars, databases, compressed archives and a lot of other information.

Special Case: SSD Drives

All information above only applies to traditional magnetic hard drives. If you installed a new copy of Windows 7, Windows 8, 8.1 or Windows 10, the OS will 'trim' your SSD drive, effectively erasing all traces of information that used to exist on that drive before the new OS. Not sure if your data is still recoverable? You don't have to pay for your data recovery tool right away. Instead, download the free evaluation version, let it scan your hard drive or SSD drive and see if your files can be recovered.





broken image