Dual boot from USB or Windows 10

xjestersdeadx

I am putting together an inexpensive gaming rig for my brother serving in the military. Easiest way to get steam with the Windows games he wants and batocera was to put batocera on a USB 3.0 stick. It has to be very easy for him as he doesn’t really have time to troubleshoot.

Going through the bios every time is not option, but it does work if I do it that way (it’s not an option for him as he will be gone and forget when he returns from deployments).

I have this almost complete, but when I tried to boot using easybcd and Windows bootloader, choose the usb drive, it says, “BOOT ERROR.” If I hit return, it DOES boot and seems to work fine. But I’m trying to figure out why this is saying “BOOT ERROR” before I send it off as I don’t want something to go wrong once it gets there.

Windows 10 is on the C: drive
Batocera is the D: drive (the usb).

EasyBCD entries in bootloader are:
Entry #1
Name: Windows 10
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path:\Windows\system32\winload.exe

Entry #2
Name: Batocera
BCD ID: {long string of ltrs/numbers}
Drive C:\
Bootloader Path: \NST\nst_linux-FD71190….long string here

If I try to change entry #2 to drive D: it just won’t boot at all. Right now if you select Batocera (entry #2) it says BOOT ERROR… but if you hit Return it will boot the USB drive.

I don’t have to use EasyBCD and the Windows Bootloader, but I couldn’t figure out how to properly tell grub to just boot the USB drive or Windows.

My goal is simply to have a menu that lets him boot Windows 10 from C drive or Batocera from the USB without going through the bios everytime.

Any help would be appreciated. :)

joinski

xjestersdeadx

The easiest way (and how i do it) is to just set the bios to boot from usb first and then unplug the USB-drive (where batocera is installed on) if you want to boot Windows and plug the USB-drive (with batocera) in, after reboot or first boot, if you want to use Batocera.
Very simple and easy :)

xjestersdeadx

joinski Thanks, unfortunately I can’t do that with this older dell. I can tell it to do UEFI or Legacy, and I can tell it what to include or not include, but not what order. This is part of the problem, I am sending it to military guys and most of them won’t remember how to run the boot menu after being deployed for 12 weeks LOL. They would also most likely lose the USB if they decide to pull it out (which is why I am using a Samsung mini drive in the back, which looks like a mouse adapter to most people). I have seen some code from grub2win and I’m going to see if that works. I’m aware this is not going the easiest route, if it were me I would just hit F12 and choose through the bios, everytime, but I’m trying to make this the most user friendly (non-computer saavy) as I can.

So, I’m trying to use whatever I can to have a menu run, they choose what they want, and go. Thanks for the idea though!

voljega

@joinski on some bios it might be impossible to do that, at least on my very recent ASUS motherboard, it seems impossible to set boot order on specific hardware devices, it’s only possible to select partitions and the one that are present at boot

xjestersdeadx

I may have found something to help me, I just need to research and figure this out. If I get a solution I will post for others. If anyone else has any ideas, I appreciate it!

This is what I found that might help: https://www.aioboot.com/en/windows-boot-manager/

xjestersdeadx

Okay I did find a solution. Again, this wasn’t meant to be the easiest way to do this, but the most noob (non-tech saavy) way since I didn’t want the Army guys having to remember to hit F12 to bring up the bios or whatever. I needed to find a way that the user could simply use menus. I finally figured out that I needed to be researching syslinux bootloader and how to start that- not how to start Batocera.

What I finally got to work was using a combination of Windows 10 bootloader and Grub2win.

Install Grub2win in Windows 10 as normal and it will add a menu item to the Win10 bootloader.
In Grub2win, choose “manage boot menu” and then add a menu item with the “custom code” option. Name it whatever you want. (I called mine “Matt’s Batocera Arcade” because that who is going to be using it). Add the following code in the edit code box:

set root=(‘hd1,1’)
syslinux_source /boot/linux root=/dev/sda2
syslinux_configfile /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg

The set root line will change depending on where you have Batocera installed, this could be hd0,1 or hd1,2 etc, depends on your setup. The syslinux_source line could be different as well, this is where you have Batocera installed as well, so you may have to experiment with root=/dev/sda1 or root=/dev/sda2 or 3 etc. Save this.

Add another item to the Grub2win menu using the “reboot” function in the dropdown box. Name this one, “Reboot to go back to Windows 10.”

Now what happens is your system boots, and I put the Grub2Win menu option as the default in the Windows boot menu with a 10 second option to choose something else (Using an app called EasyBCD). It loads Grub2win if you do nothing, and then you can select “Matt’s Batocera Arcade” which will execute the code above and Batocera will start. If you change your mind, you can choose the “Reboot to go back to Windows 10” option and it will reboot your machine and you are back to the Windows bootloader.

Hopefully if someone else wants to do this so they don’t have to bring up the bios every time, this will help!

-Jester

Koben

To boot the Windows 10 computer.
First,make sure that the bootable disk is working.
Second,enter the BIOS on the Windows 10 computer,and then change the boot oder of the Windows 10 computer. The bootable disk must be the first boot oder.
Or make a bootable disk to boot Windows computer,it can be an USB or DVD/CD.
https://www.winpwd.com/create-windows-10-boot-usb.html
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/creating-a-windows-10-boot-drive-is-really-simple-heres-how/

BZZ

Koben Or you can unplug the disk you are not using so it boots to the system you want to start ;-)

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=what+does+dual+boot+mean