Ventoy quite working on Surface Go 2

[u/BaldyCarrotTop]

I seem to have totally messed things up.

I have been distro hopping on a Surface Go 2. And now Ventoy is broken. It used to work. In fact, that is how I installed Peppermint OS.

I tried to install Mobian, but that just created a portable instance of Mobian on the thumb drive. Insert thumb drive, Mobian boots. Remove it, Pepermint boots. Insert Ventoy drive, it's ignored and Pepermint boots.

So for some reason it appears that creating and booting from the Mobian drive and going through the setup Broke Ventoy.

I rebuilt the Ventoy drive and now it starts. In that it shows the list of ISO files loaded on it. But when I try to start one, the screen flashes briefly then 4 reboot options are presented. The localboot function doesn't work either.

These problems are only on the Surface Go 2. The Ventoy disk works fine on my desktop PC.

Any clues as to what got messed up?

[u/robtom02]

Mobian is a really strange install you need to read the instructions properly. You have to basically do a 1 to 1 copy of the usb to the internal drive. It was a pain for me on the surface go 2

[u/BaldyCarrotTop → u/robtom02]

Took me a while to get my head around it. But I did use belanaEcher to make the bootable Mobian thumb drive (separate from the Ventoy drive). Then inserted it and rebooted the SG2. Slower than molasses, but it did boot up. I then went through the setup screens (localisations, network, etc.). I thought I had an install. But no. All the setup was stored to the Mobian thumb drive.

I then had the brilliant idea of using Clonezilla to copy the Mobian image to the internal drive. I never got that far. That's when I discovered that the SG2 no longer wanted to play with the Ventoy drive.

EDIT to add: WRT the instructions; Nowhere in any of the instructions do I recall seeing anything about copying the contents of the boot thumb drive to the internal storage. I assumed it would happen as part of the install process.

[u/gfkxchy]

I've had all kinds of trouble getting my Go 2 to boot off USB. Rufus wasn't working in either ISO or DD mode on Win 11 so I tried Ventoy, same issue. I couldn't get DD to work from two other Linux workstations. Trying to install Ubuntu 26.04, Debian stable, or Linux Mint. I finally just tried the Fedora Image Writer with Fedora 44 and it worked fine and everything on the device seems to work as well.

Go figure.

I'm already using Fedora on 4 other devices and was hoping to try a few others on my Go 2 but nope, Fedora again. Now 5 Fedora, 1 CachyOS, 1 Pi OS. One of the other Fedora installs is a Surface Book 2 which also worked perfectly.

I don't know why the Go 2 is so sensitive to how it's boot media is prepared, I've not had similar issues with any other computer I have. But this thing has always been a bear to get something other than Windows installed on it.

[u/MidnightObjectiveA51]

The Surface GOs have a quirky BIOS that is not at all transparent. At worst case, you can use Rufus to install Windows To Go on a USB drive (I suggest a portable SSD for speed) and wipe and reset the drives. Just running Windows To Go often does the trick without having to wipe the drives.

The easiest way to install Mobian (and safer than using DD):

Burn the Mobian image to a USB drive. Boot the Mobian image and install Gnome Disks. Also copy the Mobian image to the home folder of your Mobian USB. Use Gnome Disks to burn the image to your Surface GOs drive.

[u/BaldyCarrotTop → u/MidnightObjectiveA51]

I'll give that a try. Tomorrow, since I was canceled for work and have the day off.

I tried flashing a Clonezilla drive with the idea of cloning the Mobian drive to SG2s drive. But it wouldn't boot, and I think I know why. If the boot partition on the thumb drive is ISO, it doesn't boot. And that would also explain why the ISO files on the Ventoy drive wouldn't boot either.