I just purchased this laptop, I have Linuxmint installed(using Rufus) on a bootable Sabrent USB drive. The laptop tries to read the drive then boots into windows. Secure boot is disabled, using F9 in boot manager does not show the drive. I have no problem booting it from from desktop. Seems HP has long issues booting USB drives. Any thoughts?
How can you tell it tries to read the USB drive? Activity light?
Once in Windows can you read the USB drive?
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yes, I can see the activity light staying on, I could see the drive in file manager but being formatted in Linux format I couldn’t read it. I’m in the process now of burning a new image using Rufus then I am going to reinstall Linux onto that hard drive using fat32 format
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It is not clear what you are burning to the usb drive?
Are you making an install usb? or are you actually installing Linux on the usb drive?
Where are you using fat32 format?
If you are trying to install Linux to HD you should format the HD partition to ext4, not fat32.
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Nevj; I am installing from a usb stick to a 256gb usb portable hard drive that I can take with me and be bootable. I was formatting it Fat32 so a win OS could read it that part not that important
OK, Your USB hard drive needs to be partitioned ( the installer can do it) and the partition which is to be the root filesystem needs to be formatted to take an ext4 filesystem. You will need to install grub bootloader on the portable usb drive ( again , the installer can do it)
I dont think you can install Linux on a fat32 filesystem… it needs a filesystem with permissions and symbolic links. Nearly everyone uses ext3 or ext4.
I am assuming you dont want Windows on the portable usb drive, only Linux. If you are giving the whole portable usb drive to Linux, it is a fairly easy install. Just be careful you get the right device name for the portable usb drive… you dont want the installer writing all over the wrong disk.
Regards
Neville
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In the first post @jfacteau said it wouldn’t boot from the USB and it didn’t show up in BIOS (I think). I think the fat32 is just to confirm that Windows and the laptop can read and write the USB stick maybe.
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you are correct. I tried again last night putting Linuxmint onto that usb drive, The linux install program wants to keep writing to my UEFI, I’m wondering if the best way is to just unplug my exisitng hard drives, boot from the thumb drive and install to the usb, take everything out of the picture. And for the record I’m new to Linux for the most part but get around PC’s quite well
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I think that is a good way to proceed.
The linux install program wants to keep writing to my UEFI
I think you mean it wants to write to the EFI System partition on your HD., I will always want to do that, if you are using UEFI boot. That is where it puts the bootloader (grub)
So , yes, unplugging the HD will take that out of the picture. It will then want to create an EFI system partition on your portable usb drive. Let it do that, it is part of setting up the bootloader, and you want that portable drive to be bootable.
You should be OK just letting the installer partition and format the portable drive, provided you are using the whole drive for Linux.
Tell it to make a root partition, a swap space, and a /home partition if you want it separate from the root partition. You might need to tell it to make an EFI system partition… not sure it might do it automatically. Make it 512Mb and format it wuth a FAT filesystem. All the other partitions (/ and /home) should be ext3 or ext4.
If you want anything more complicated, use gparted to partition and format the portable drive first, before you do the install.
You could try using Ventoy. You can install it to a USB drive. Then all you have to do is copy ISOs from as many system as the size of your USB key allows, and even have an additional data partition en FAT32 or NTFS. It works seemlessly on most computers. You can even have permanence files so that you can save a configuration (like keyboard and wifi connections).
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I understand you attempt to install a multi-boot system ,meaning you wish to retain the Windoze system the laptop came with and add Linux Mint.
It means you need to free-up hard drive space to install Linux Mint . That can be done best by using a Gparted CD or USB stick.
In Gparted you see the Windoze partition(s) and the free space . You now can decide how much free space you can afford for Linux Mint ,obviously keeping enough free space for Windoze .
In Gparted you now can make free space “unallocated” to install Linux Mint.
Following this action you can install Linux Mint.
When ,a few years ago , I had multiple Linux distros on the same HD I used the above procedure successfully (multiple times).
BTW I have now done away with multiple distros on the same HD and only use Linux Mint on the now SSD, using the above HD only for data .
All this on a 12 yrs old desktop PC with first gen i7 CPU and 8GB RAM ,still going strong.
Frank (wicklowham) in County Wicklow Rep. of Ireland.
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NO, I am wanting to add a bootable USB drive (not a stick) with linuxmint on it
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For your intended action there is no difference between a USB Stick and an (obviously external) USB HD or SSD , but you might have to add the application : grub customiser such that when starting your PC you can either boot Windoze or Linux Mint.
Frank (wicklowham) in County Wicklow ,Rep. of Ireland
I agree with what you are saying stick vs ssd, the issue is my HP laptop won’t recognize it at boot, secure boot in the BIOS is disabled, boot manager does not see it. My desktop has no issue at all with it
If the laptops bios does not offer booting from a usb drive, there is nothing you can do. You cant boot from a usb device in that laptop.
Is that really what it is?
or is it
- you have not looked carefully enough in the bios. They can be confusing… the usb boot option should be there in a modern laptop
- the laptop only misbehaves for that particular usb drive?. You did say the light blinks… how did you get to there?
This whole story is mysterious. Are we overlooking something?
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I see the light blinking on the usb drive. Does that for a few seconds then boots into windows
I think that is just the Windows boot looking around to see what disks are present.
I presume you told it to boot windows, but had the usb drive plugged in?
Have another look at your bios. Are you sure you cant find an option in the boot menu to boot from a usb drive?
Usb is the first selection in the boot sequence
Hello @jfacteau
When you selected the usb did you see other entries for the same usb, there should be three entries for the one usb, if so move the other two entries up and make sure WM$ is definitely last in the list.
regards
artytux
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In a lot of desktop and laptops, you have to first get to the boot menu and then select (by using up / down arrow) which device to boot.
To get the boot menu depending upon the PC at power on you may have to hit Esc, PF10, or PF12.
A quick search on the web found this;
How to Access HP Boot Menu
- Turn on or restart the HP computer.
- Press “Esc” or “F9” immediately to enter the Boot Menu.
- Wait for the HP boot menu to show up.
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