so I got a copy of windows 7. I put it on a USB drive, made a primary partition and set it active. Copied the bcd. Set the boot order correctly. It just won't boot from the USB drive. I turned off secure boot. Booting into the drive manually from the boot menu doesn't work either, it just brings up windows 8 repair menu. Running the setup from windows 8 throws an error as follows
"Windows encountered an unexpected error" right after "setup is starting"
Windows – Toshiba laptop won’t boot from usb
bootusbwindows
Best Answer
There are a few of things wrong with what is occurring, and that is:
Now, for #1, Windows 7 doesn't actually support full UEFI mode, and will crash at loading the BCD. To fix this, you need to either
As for #2, Windows 7 doesn't natively support USB 3 either, so you need to enable legacy USB/USB 2.0, which Windows 7 does natively support. This can also be done at the UEFI Firmware/BIOS level.
Now, onto #3. Fast Boot MUST be disabled before attempting to install any other OS. To do this:
Control Panel
Power Options
Power Options
click onChoose what the power buttons do
Change settings that are currently unavailable
Turn on Fast Startup
Save Changes
Legacy USB Support
and eitherUEFI with CSM
orLegacy Boot/BIOS
modes.