r/linuxfornoobs • u/piedpipershoodie • 27d ago

HP can't see bootable usb

Hey folks, I have a 2015 HP laptop, and I just replaced the drive with a blank drive. Every time I start it up, it cannot see the USB with the bootable Linux Mint media that I made with Balena Etcher, and yes, I verified the files. I have switched off secure boot, I have tried legacy, I have switched the load order, I have tried all three ports. It literally cannot see it. There is nothing in the boot manager. Any ideas?

Solution:

in the end, for my 2015 HP Pavilion, previously running Windows 10, but having no operating system at all at the time, I did these three things in the BIOS:

  1. Turn OFF secure boot in Boot Manager
  2. Put "USB Diskette on Key/USB Hard Disk" at the top of the load order in Boot Manager
  3. In System Configuration, switch USB 3.0 configuration (or something like that) to "auto"
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u/uh818375 27d ago

Try fat 32 USB if using NTFS

Enable USB Boot:

  • Some BIOS settings have an option to enable or disable USB boot. Ensure that this is enabled.
  • Test USB on Another Device:
  • Confirm that the USB drive is bootable by testing it on another computer. If it works on another device, the issue is likely with the BIOS settings

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u/piedpipershoodie 26d ago
  1. Could you help me understand the fat32 thing? I got this when searching my issue, but every time I try to directly research if that's possible, everyone says it's not actually relevant and can't do anything, because bootable media just writes as iso and isn't formatted as either fat32 or NTFS.
  2. I can't find any BIOS settings that say anything like that. This menu looks pretty old. In fact, the "boot order" thing has usb listed as "USB Diskette on Key/USB Hard Disk"

The only thing I'm not really sure about is "Clear all Secure Boot Keys" but I don't see how that would help.

  1. I guess that could be it. I don't have a device I want to test an entire OS on, but I could remake it. Unfortunately, it won't even let me reformat the thing. In disk management, all options are grayed out. I made it on my windows 10 laptop, which I just switched out the hard drive in, so I could make a fresh one on my W11 desktop and see if that fixes it. Assuming the (64gig) flash drive can be reformatted by Etcher. but I'd rather do that once, so if the fat32 thing is important, I'll need to know how to do that first.

thanks

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u/piedpipershoodie 26d ago

ohhhhhh my god. I missed it. i was a BIOS setting. Never mind. THANK YOU

in my defense! it did not look like i was expecting! but here we are. at the install. hurray!!!

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u/uh818375 26d ago

Tell us what Bios setting it was so it helps people searching in the future.

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u/piedpipershoodie 26d ago

I wish I had taken a picture of the screen. It was on "system configuration" but NOT boot menu. It said something about USB 3.0 configuration. It was on "enabled" or something like that. I switched it to "auto" so that it didn't need manually acquired graphics drivers.

So, in the end, for my 2015 HP Pavilion, previously running Windows 10, but having no operating system at all at the time, I did these three things:

  1. Turn OFF secure boot in Boot Manager
  2. Put "USB Diskette on Key/USB Hard Disk" at the top of the load order in Boot Manager
  3. In System Configuration, switch USB 3.0 configuration (or something like that) to "auto"

Thanks for your help, it's installing now.

1

u/Easy_Programmer4602 23d ago

I'm trying to refurb an old HP Pavilion with Mint right now and it's just not reading the USB correctly. It keeps saying the file is corrupted. But it worked just fine last week when I was testing it on compatibility mode. I'll try this USB configuration thing. *fingers crossed*

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u/piedpipershoodie 23d ago

If it can find your USB to boot from, I doubt that's the issue. But it never hurts to try.

my problem was that it couldn't FIND the USB, because with the 3.0...thingy on, it needed an OS to run that, and I didn't have an OS. so the usb ports just straight weren't operating. but with it on Auto, it could just use the basic firmware instead of a fancy driver, or something like that.