USB Boot... Losing my mind!!

[abillybob]

Hi All

 

Hope you can shed some light on this. So currently I have this new server and a Windows Server 2016 ISO I need to make a bootable media from. I have put it on a USB stick using Rufus as ISO to USB would fail and so would any other way I tried such as xcopy via CMD.

 

Rufus has successfully made the drive but then when trying to boot from it, it fails. I then decided to transfer the ISO to MDT and booted from there, the server will get so far but then will freeze on the spinny wheel thing with the damn awful HP logo at the top (I'm sick of seeing it) and it never gets to the installation screen for MDT.

 

I have tried literally everything I can think of, am I doing something wrong here or is there something else I can try? I presume it's because normally software would make a USB stick Fat32 but as the WIM file is bigger than 4GB there's the limitation?

 

Any help would be most appreciated. I'm pulling my hair out with this one grrrrr!!

 

Thanks all!!

[bald_pig]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-essentials/install/create-a-bootable-usb-flash-drive

[Norphy]

If you're getting the HP logo with the spinny wheel, this suggests that the server is in EFI mode. Did you make the partition scheme GPT and the target system UEFI?

 

Rufus can format the flash drive as NTFS as well so you can get around the 4GB file limit.

[Arthur]

I presume it's because normally software would make a USB stick Fat32 but as the WIM file is bigger than 4GB there's the limitation?

As @Norphy mentioned above, Rufus can get around the FAT32 file size limit on UEFI systems.

 

https://github.com/pbatard/uefi-ntfs

[abillybob]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-essentials/install/create-a-bootable-usb-flash-drive

 

I have already tried this but it wouldn't work

 

If you're getting the HP logo with the spinny wheel, this suggests that the server is in EFI mode. Did you make the partition scheme GPT and the target system UEFI?

Rufus can format the flash drive as NTFS as well so you can get around the 4GB file limit.

Rufus does format the USB stick to NTFS and then I end up with two partitions on the USB stick but still the server won't boot from it

[DJ-1701]

Have you tried booting from a DVD? Can save you a lot of hassle.

[abillybob]

So I've got it booted now... Think the USB stick was dodgy another one worked fine!

 

Problem is now when I click "Custom" and want to select the drive it says "No Storage Found, If you'd like to load a storage driver click load drivers"

 

It's a HP DL20 Gen9 E3?

[Steve21]

What raid controller etc are you using? If it's not built into the disk you'll need to get the drivers and use the import etc

 

(I assume you have created a virtual disk in the raid controller before trying to build it too? )

 

Steve

[abillybob]

I'm not sure about Raid I've never set one up just always had servers shipped to me already done! So no I haven't done any of those things sorry

 

Where do I start?

[Steve21]

Normally it depends if someone has done any pre-work on the server, but if not there will be a key at boot to enter the raid config, (like an F8 style etc but not), and then you need to choose what HDDs are going to be raided and what raid level etc, before that's done it won't show a drive through to Windows etc sometimes as effectively there isn't one setup

 

Steve

[3s-gtech]

Since Windows 7 (maybe Vista?) the dialog to insert extra drivers has been built into the GUI for installing Windows, it's much simpler (and not so heavily geared to floppy disk as it used to be).

[Norphy]

I'm not sure about Raid I've never set one up just always had servers shipped to me already done! So no I haven't done any of those things sorry

 

Where do I start?

 

Is the server still in support? HPE do a systems build utility disk which slipstreams all of the drivers into an installation routine. If you can find that, you will save some time I think.