In a previous article I described how to install Windows 10 on a machine when all you have otherwise is a Mac. The problem is that you need Windows 10 to install Windows 10, so I had to use Virtualbox on the Mac to turn my USB device into a Windows-10 installer.
The Problem
I installed Windows 10 onto my refurbished Dell T5810 workstation using the process described in the previous article. This however only worked if you booted your destination drive using “Legacy” mode. That was OK for a while, but I wanted to boot using UEFI because, so I’m told, that’s the more modern/sophisticated way to do things and it will make your machine boot faster.
Now, I originally assumed that my installation of Windows 10, carried out as it was with the official Microsoft Installer software within Virtualbox, would have made my installation of Windows 10 UEFI compatible by default. So I booted my workstation into System Setup (by pressing F2 on restart), and started playing around with settings. I very naively assumed that Dell would not allow me to set things in such a way as to make it impossible for me to get back into System Setup. Nope. I tried some settings following the advice of some random crapy article I googled, and my workstation stopped working altogether. Powering it on left me with a totally blank screen.
I followed some advice to get the CMOS back to factory settings by TWICE removing the watch battery from the motherboard, holding the power button for 30 seconds (to drain any residual charge from the capacitors, etc.), but this did not solve the problem. However, the third time I tried this I decided to leave the battery out overnight just in case it needed several hours to completely reset and, thankfully, that worked!
The Solution
Upon further research, I came to realize that my installation of Windows 10 was fundamentally incapable of UEFI booting because that feature is simply not integrated into my original USB installer; an option that, as I said, the official Microsoft Software does not offer. Again, how naive of me to assume that a product straight from Microsoft to support its historic flagship product would not offer, let alone provide by default, the most modern booting option.
Anyhow, long story short, you need to create the USB device installer using a different software product called rufus. So follow all the steps in the previous article up to the point where you have a Windows 10 instance running on Virtualbox, you’ve downloaded the Microsoft MediaCreationTool, and you’ve arrived at this window:
Now, instead of creating our Windows 10 installer directly onto the USB device, you need to instead create an ISO file and save it to your simulated Desktop.
Next, go to https://rufus.ie/downloads and save the latest .exe file to your Virtualbox instance’s Downloads folder.
Once downloaded, run rufus as administrator to get this interface:
Under the “Device” field you need to select your USB device (which, here, is confusingly labelled by its partitions). Next, in the “Boot selection” field you need to select “UEFI:NTFS”, and make sure the Partition Scheme is GPT. In the field next to the “Boot selection” field, labelled “Select”, you need to locate the ISO file you downloaded using the MediaCreationTool. Make sure the rest of your settings are the same as in the image above (or are otherwise sensible), and hit START to format your USB device.
Once that process is finished you can quit Virtualbox and, boot up your target machine with this USB device, and install Windows 10 from scratch, and then you can expect it to boot with UEFI.
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