Hi,
I just came across a Neosmart document describing the procedure to have EasyRE correctly set up on an USB stick. Rufus is supposed NOT to be doing it correctly, allthough the text messages during boot looked/almost ?) quite the same...
One should use the (free to use) Neosmart "EasyUSBCreator_light" tool to setup the USB stick. The USB stick itself should have been formatted using the FAT32 (!) file system. As the tools GUI is very simple to use, nothing else has to be done. Strange enough, network drives were not accessible. On the other side the PC to test / repair should be setup in the UEFI/BIOS as
NOT using the "Secure Boot" feature and should be enabled to boot from the (bootable) USB stick. CSM (!) should be "ENABLED" (very important !) even on Windows 11. This single point seems to be the reason, why I couldn't boot EasyRE from my USB stick during previous setups. After some time and lots of text messages flying by on the screen EasyRE booted, really
Many functions shown on the then visible menu screen where not usable / not active, like the "Virus Scanner" (needs another - paid - version), the "Partition Manager" (non-functional), the "Backup" feature (non-functional), the internet "Browser" (Chromium" (?), non-functional). One can select all of them, but nothing happens afterwards, at least on my screen. Only the virsu scan was displaying a window, saying, that one should contact Neosmat, because the current license wouldn't cover ist. Thus the free version seems to be a stripped down variant of the equivalent paid software version. Except for "Automatic Repair" and the plain cmd interface (Linux type commands!) nothing else was functional (sorry, no free lunch !). I was using a German keyboard, which was not selectable (US version seems to be preinstalled), causing lots of confusion, because none of the Windows commands where functioning, thus all keyboard entries had to be done by trial and error. Even help was non-functional...
To sum ist up: after a lengthy memory test the "Automatic Repair" feature asked me to identify the drive with the Windows 11 installation. Pressing "Continue" after that started the multi-step procedure repair process, which - after a reboot - left me (sorry) with a still not functioning Windows 11 boot, ending finally in a (dead) black screen. I tried this twice, but the outcome was still the same: no Windows boot at all...
Some messages during "Automatic Repair" were quite confusing, to say the least, like "Rewriting MBR on device ..." although all disks (except the USB stick) use GPT as the file system.
Note: After my 1st attempt I got two entries for the same boot drive in the UEFI boot menu with different namings offered, which disappeared the 2nd time. I resetted everything to the boot parameters needed for booting Windows 11 (Secure Boot, no CSM, GPT, TPM and else), but no Windows boot after all...
To bad...
PS.: I checked the partition setup now with the Windows 11 "diskpart" program from the Windows 11 install USB stick (repair option). The partition setup seems to be "screwed up" now completly, "bcdedit" will not show anymore the contents of the BCD file and the boot up process just ends in a black screen.
Will have to see, if the disks are still signaled by diskpart if they are GPT ... => I checked with diskpart the partition "list disk" again and the boot drive, which had bin GPT formatted, is now a MBR disk. F..k !!!!!
Thus the resume in
my case: Beware of the "Automatic Repair" functionality of "EasyRE for Windows 11" !
