Booting MBR and UEFI from one USB device
Having more than one PC may mean a mix of BIOS and UEFI motherboards and therefore boot types. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue because you can boot either UEFI or MBR from a UEFI motherboard, but this may not be the case if you have an existing installation. In this case the motherboard will attempt to boot the existing UEFI installation in preference to the MBR recovery USB. To work around this you need a UEFI bootable USB, but that means you can’t use it on your old BIOS/MBR boot motherboard.
Here is my attempt at a USB device that boots on either system and allows you to add multiple bootable systems to the device.
Requirements
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[*]A USB stick, of course. This should work on a hard disk as well, but I haven’t tested it.
[*]Download Yumi Multiboot USB creator.
[*]A couple of machines to test.
Preliminaries
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[*]Create ISO(s) of the MBR/BIOS bootable disks you want to use.
[*]Create a UEFI bootable USB of the UEFI recovery / utility program you want to use.
[*]Copy all of the files and folders from the UEFI bootable USB device to a new folder on your hard disk.
Currently I have only been able to use one UEFI bootable system, but I’m working on it.
[*]The USB device is now available for use as your multi-boot device.
Procedure
Create the MBR/BIOS bootable utilities.
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[*]Format the USB device as MBR/FAT32. You must not create it as GPT or it won’t boot on older systems.
[*]Run Yumi and choose the USB drive.
[*]Select “Try Unlisted ISO (GRUB from RAM)”. Other selections may work, but this one seems consistent.
[*]Browse to and select the ISO you created above.
[*]Click Create.
[*]Add more ISOs if required.
[*]Close Yumi.
Install the UEFI boot program
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[*]Copy all of the UEFI boot files saved to your hard disk in the Requirements section.
[*]Paste the files and folders to the root of the USB device you just created. Hopefully there will not be any conflicts.
Now you are ready to test.
Testing the UEFI boot
Note: this assumes you don’t have Secure Boot enabled. If you have you will need to disable it to test and when you need use you recovery USB device. Remember to re-enable it when done.
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[*]Plug the USB device in while Windows is running.
[*]Right click on the Windows flag, hold Shift down and click Shutdown > Restart.
[*]When prompted select Use a Device.
[*]Choose the USB device you want to use and the PC will boot from it.
Testing the MBR boot
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[*]Shut down the PC.
[*]Plug in the USB device.
[*]Start the PC and press F12 / F10 to get to the boot menu.
[*]Select the USB device and the PC will boot from it.
cheers, Paul
