Superguide

If you’re creating a bootable USB recovery drive, however, you should take the time to expand the ‘ WriteMedia’ section. If your PC has a 64-bit UEFI (check with the manufacturer), select the ‘Copy to USBDevice’ box; if not, select ‘Copy to USBDevice BCD Bootloader’ instead, and check ‘Add Grub2-EFI (x64 UEFI only)’ to ensure it boots. Click the folder button under ’Please select the root directory of your USB-Device’, to select the correct drive letter if necessary, then click ‘Copy to USB’ to build your recovery drive from the ISO you just created.

BEYOND THE BASICS

You can now test the recovery drive by booting from it in the same way you’d boot from the previous two recovery options. A menu appears — select ‘Win10PESE’ to boot into your recovery environment. When the desktop environment pops up, you’re prompted to choose your network connection type, if one is detected — the default DHCP is automatically selected after a fivesecond pause.

You then find yourself at a close approximation of the Windows 10 desktop, albeit one employing a more ‘classic’ Windows look and feel. You’ll see convenient shortcuts to File Explorer, the Command Prompt and PENetwork on both the Taskbar and desktop — there’s also a shortcut to Firefox, giving you access to the web. PENetwork merely launches the network manager, which should already be running and accessible from the Taskbar Notification area, alongside other controls, including one that enables you to set a different desktop resolution if you wish (note this feature doesn’t work very well on UEFI systems — you’re likely to find only the 1,920 x 1,080 and 1,024 x 768 options work).

Click the Start button, and select ‘All Programs’ to see what tools and utilities are included with the vanilla Win10PESE disc — shortcuts to critical Control Panel and system management applets are included, as are a handful of file-related tools (including 7-Zip), BootICE (for managing the boot manager), a PDF viewer and some handy system tools, including Remote Regedit (for manipulating your Registry in case your boot problems stem from there), as well as access to the System Recovery options found in Windows itself.

These tools are all welcome and helpful, but you may be hankering after different tools and utilities — you may even simply want to be able to run a particular app, such as a word processor, while you try to fix your boot problem. The good news is that your Win10PESE environment can support third-party applications and programs, too.

We say ‘some’ because, while certain program installers work, on the whole, you’re limited to portable apps, namely those that run directly from a folder. You can download these from the internet (look under X:\Users\Default