[SOLVED] Windows 10 shortcut to restart into a USB flash drive?

darrellbunger

Honorable
Sep 23, 2017
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10,510
I have found several ways to reboot a PC to a USB drive but by using a shortcut is not one of them. I could rearrange the BIOS order, but this is not ideal for my situation as I need the Win 10 user to be able to initiate a selective reboot that specifies to reboot into the USB drive else do a normal restart back to Windows. I could also just use the boot options BIOS hotkey during startup. Both have drawbacks I don't care for, either unplugging the USB as needed or trying to hit the boot options key before timing out.

I could also have a shortcut that restarts into the advanced startup options menu, which again gives me access to reboot into the EFI USB option - also not ideal; this would be better than the previous two solutions since it overcomes having to remove the USB and having to get a jump on the boot option key timeout; not ideal because a shortcut should be able to pass this option to the restart commander, no other action other than to click the shortcut to boot to the USB drive otherwise it reboots normally back into Windows.

Am I being nitpicky, maybe a little bit. I figure that there's gotta be a way to achieve some kind of functionality like this, it's a computer. They do what we tell them to do, always, even when we tell them to do something that they can't and error out on us. I figure if the advanced restart options menu can tell the mobo to boot to EFI USB device, the shutdown /o option should be able to pass that desired action along to the advanced startup handler, yes? Then we just click on our USB Boot shortcut and done. Once through with the USB boot device, we restart normally from it and we go back to Windows 10.

Thoughts? Is this currently a pipe dream or is it achievable? I could care less what the methodology is, be it coding, scripting, etc... I just wanna know if it can be done and if so please nudge me down the correct path. I'll figure it out from there.
 
Solution
That is a BIOS function, not a Windows function.
Anything in Windows can't run until Windows starts at least minimally.
in case of uefi, windows can comunicate with it and bypass/change uefi settings
in case of bios, ure right :)

here is that shortcut

shutdown.exe /r /o

darrellbunger

Honorable
Sep 23, 2017
10
0
10,510
FYI, I don't think it was clear in my OP, this is a UEFI boot system. Passing commands to bypass/change UEFI settings are valid in my configuration.

That'll do! Thanks for the confirmation. That starts me into the advanced startup options where I can choose to boot to USB without a BIOS timeout to worry about. I was hoping for a more direct way to pass the "UEFI boot to USB" command to the EFI handler than that, like bypass the advanced startup altogether and just go straight to USB boot.

Maybe I could look into how the system hands off the UEFI setting changes to the BIOS before restart, find some crumb of a hint that would get me on the road I am looking for.
 
FYI, I don't think it was clear in my OP, this is a UEFI boot system. Passing commands to bypass/change UEFI settings are valid in my configuration.

That'll do! Thanks for the confirmation. That starts me into the advanced startup options where I can choose to boot to USB without a BIOS timeout to worry about. I was hoping for a more direct way to pass the "UEFI boot to USB" command to the EFI handler than that, like bypass the advanced startup altogether and just go straight to USB boot.

Maybe I could look into how the system hands off the UEFI setting changes to the BIOS before restart, find some crumb of a hint that would get me on the road I am looking for.
windows doesnt give direct access to efi enviroment to users...
microsoft gave access just to OEMs q.q