HP Pavilion DV6 won't boot from external hard drive

[joag7501]

Hello I have an older HP Laptop, specifically the HP Pavilion DV6 6128nr and this laptop cannot boot from an external hard drive. The laptop is not UEFI or EFI and can some USB media. However, the main difference is that the external hard drive has a full installation of Ubuntu on it.

[WAWood]

@joag7501 

Have you tried booting the DV6 from a USB stick with Windows install media on it? Asking because I also have a DV6 and it boots fine from USB sticks.

But ... if it only refuses to boot from the external drive, that is a Linux problem -- and HP does not provide consumer level support for Linux issues, nor does it provide Linux drivers.

Your best bet for Linux support, is to contact the support forum for the Linux distro you are trying to install -- in this case, the Ubuntu Forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/

Good Luck

[joag7501]

@WAWood. I think it might be related to a secure boot problem. I can boot using a Ubuntu Live CD on a USB as well as Kali Linux. The problem occurs when the OS is installed on a USB, then it won't boot. 

[WAWood]

@joag7501 

OK, thanks for the details.

You can't boot Windows from an external drive.

You can boot install media, but not after Windows is installed.

[joag7501]

@WAWood well actually I installed Ubuntu on the external hard drive. My computer is currently running CentOS. But yes that is the gist of the problem.

[WAWood]

@joag7501 

There ARE ways to install Windows to an external drive that will then boot -- but it involves a LOT of custom work to get that to happen -- and that is well beyond what we can provide here.

Just migrating a Windows installation from an internal drive to an external one, is not going to work.

[joag7501]

I understand Windows is a bit more complex, but my question I guess is if there was a way to remove or dissable Secure Boot on this computer if possible? It has no UEFI setting in the Bios, although I do suspect this is the case. I have tried many devices and none of them work. I think I did the installations correctly on each device, so this rules out driver problems. Once again I do believe that the issue is with some form of Secureboot but there is nothing in the Bios that says that is the case.