Having difficulty booting from USB.

sophicidal

Sat Mar 22, 2014 10:21:26 pm

I'm trying to give 6 a test drive on this low power windows 8 laptop but I'm having difficulty booting from USB.

I tried this out on my old desktop and it's working swell but I want to see if it fits nice and snug on this machine before I edge W8 out. No matter what I've done so far I can't boot from USB. It says something like "system is incapable of booting from USB." So I turned secure boot off and it's not doing anything. This is a brand new machine (Acer Aspire V5-123) and I'm really frustrated with this. I know this isn't directly related to the operating system but I figure someone here may have run into the same roadblock.

zinzan

Sun Mar 23, 2014 3:26:25 am

Hi sophicidal, Welcome to Zorin forums.

Have you set the bios to boot from usb? I recall that I went into bios immediately after computer splash screen by pushing 'del' button on keyboard (your's may vary) and looked for something about 'boot sequence' or 'boot order' and then looked for usb-hdd (which is 'switch' for the bootable usb when plugged in - mine is an older computer, your's may be called usb something or other) and made it the first boot before optical drive and hdd.

I then booted Zorin 6.4 using the pendrivelinux.com utility 'Yumi'. They also have a universal usb installer that does one distro (Yumi does several).

Note - my 8gb flash drive takes 7 minutes to load a boot install and I originally thought it had failed, went away to make and have lunch, came back and there it was all loaded. Speed of booting flash drives varies quite a bit I have read.

Best wishes.

Edit: I understand PLOP can be used on machines that cannot boot from usb.

Edit again. Oh, on rereading your post I see you already know how to get usb boot going on an older machine. Sorry, disregard my post.

Anonymous

Sun Mar 23, 2014 4:38:21 am

Read my post at the link below concerning Windows 8 boot issues with Zorin OS.
This should solve your headache !!!!

Link : viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6459&start=10

sophicidal

Sun Mar 23, 2014 10:31:55 am

sophicidal wrote:Edit: I understand PLOP can be used on machines that cannot boot from usb.

I don't really feel confident enough to be using PLOP. It's one daunting little program at first glance.

Gizmuntu wrote:Read my post at the link below concerning Windows 8 boot issues with Zorin OS.
This should solve your headache !!!!

Link : viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6459&start=10

I haven't been able to dual boot anything yet. This machine is only W8. Is this still relevant?

Swarfendor437

Sun Mar 23, 2014 10:38:49 am

Hi, that piece of information is crucial!

(Windows 8)

See this post:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6500

sophicidal

Sun Mar 23, 2014 10:50:25 am

Swarfendor437 wrote:Hi, that piece of information is crucial! (Windows 8)

See this post:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6500

I actually saw that immediately after I arrived and downloaded the program.

Do I need to set my partitions a certain way?
What version of GRUB is used?
Will I need the ISO?

Swarfendor437

Sun Mar 23, 2014 11:03:49 am

HI there, Partitions for Zorin are (because that is what I prefer) set up manually under the last install option 'Something else' - See my tutorial video which shows how to install Zorin on a drive by itself - the crucial bit is the system ['/'] partition which should be 15 Gb Minimum - I usually set this to 30 Gb but you could make it bigger if you wanted. Swap Area should be at the END of the drive and the space left between '/' and 'swap area' should be made '/home' - both '/' and '/home' should be formatted to 'ext4' (swap area does not have to be given a file system type as it does this itself but it should be no less than 4 Gb in size, and if your physical RAM in the machine is greater than 4 Gb then the swap area should equal this.

If you are going to use the Easy BCD Method, you should place GRUB as per that tutorial at the start of the 'sdax' (where 'x' is the number allocated by Zorin for '/' - you could even create a '/boot' partition before '/' of 512 Mb and place GRUB in that - it is GRUB 2 that is used by the way not GRUB 0.99.

You will need the .iso

Now one of the reasons why you may not be able to boot from USB is down to the BIOS settings - see if you can change the boot device settings by setting the BIOS to 'Legacy' mode while you do this (you will not be able to boot into Windows 8 while you have Legacy mode on - you can switch it back on after you have partitioned.

Just as a precaution as we cannot everything will work in all circumstances (as none of us are likely to own the same piece of kit that you have):

1. Backup all crucial data.

2. Be sure you have made a recovery/repair disk for your Windows 8 installation.

3. If you have an external drive that does NOT have data on it (clean) then create a restore image in Windows 8 - what I find infuriating is that when I tried this with my Windows 8.1 it wanted to delete everything I had - so I have not done that (My rig has 3 hard drives - each with separate OS - Windows 7 Pro 32-bit, Zorin 8 Ultimate 64 bit, Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit).

Keep us posted!

sophicidal

Sun Mar 23, 2014 11:27:57 am

Swarfendor437 wrote:HI there, Partitions for Zorin are (because that is what I prefer) set up manually under the last install option 'Something else' - See my tutorial video which shows how to install Zorin on a drive by itself - the crucial bit is the system ['/'] partition which should be 15 Gb Minimum - I usually set this to 30 Gb but you could make it bigger if you wanted. Swap Area should be at the END of the drive and the space left between '/' and 'swap area' should be made '/home' - both '/' and '/home' should be formatted to 'ext4' (swap area does not have to be given a file system type as it does this itself but it should be no less than 4 Gb in size, and if your physical RAM in the machine is greater than 4 Gb then the swap area should equal this.

If you are going to use the Easy BCD Method, you should place GRUB as per that tutorial at the start of the 'sdax' (where 'x' is the number allocated by Zorin for '/' - you could even create a '/boot' partition before '/' of 512 Mb and place GRUB in that - it is GRUB 2 that is used by the way not GRUB 0.99.

You will need the .iso

Now one of the reasons why you may not be able to boot from USB is down to the BIOS settings - see if you can change the boot device settings by setting the BIOS to 'Legacy' mode while you do this (you will not be able to boot into Windows 8 while you have Legacy mode on - you can switch it back on after you have partitioned.

Just as a precaution as we cannot everything will work in all circumstances (as none of us are likely to own the same piece of kit that you have):

1. Backup all crucial data.

2. Be sure you have made a recovery/repair disk for your Windows 8 installation.

3. If you have an external drive that does NOT have data on it (clean) then create a restore image in Windows 8 - what I find infuriating is that when I tried this with my Windows 8.1 it wanted to delete everything I had - so I have not done that (My rig has 3 hard drives - each with separate OS - Windows 7 Pro 32-bit, Zorin 8 Ultimate 64 bit, Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit).

Keep us posted!

Everything before "You will need the .iso" goes straight over my head, friend.
So if I were to follow the tutorial I'd be fine right?

I was told that going into Legacy would clean off my system which is why I haven't tried that so far. I've disabled secure boot already. I'll go in and poke around some more now.

I have a partition on my external hard drive where I ran "acer erecovery" onto.

Swarfendor437

Sun Mar 23, 2014 1:27:51 pm

Hi, check out my old video where I installed Zorin 4 Ultimate 64-bit alongside Windows XP and Windows 7 (this was before I was made aware of what swap area should be and where it should be placed with the newer GNU/Linux distributions:

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v283328437Pyp3Byy

and my recent tutorial installing Zorin 8 RC 64-bit:

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v67233697bJ2bS9jm

This will give you an understanding of how the partitions are named and numbered in GNU/Linux.

When I stipulated you need the .iso you will need it to install the distribution - it is possible to install a distribution from the hard drive without burning a DVD but I have not tried it and I don't think it is directly possible to download to Windows 8 and install from there:

http://www.howtoforge.com/install-linux ... hard-drive

This is a static archive of the old Zorin Forum.