Booting from USB - ignores my choice and boots from the hard drive anyway!

[GB_Joe]

Hello everyone!

I've just got a new EliteBook 820 G2 and I'm trying to dual-boot it with Ubuntu. I've got it on a USB hard drive which I've used to successfully install it onto a couple of other machines (dual-booting a Lenovo T430 and also on a new-build AMD desktop). I can get into the boot options either with Esc or F9 and the drive shows up, but it just ignores it and goes straight to Windows.

I do have the external drive partitioned, so perhaps it's not looking at the right one? Seems funny that it would've worked on the other two systems, but perhaps a quirk of the HP BIOS?I don't have a simple USB pen drive with enough capacity to fit the installer on, but do you think I should try to borrow one for this?

Any help or suggestions appreciated!

Cheers,

Joe.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi, Joe:

The only suggestion I can offer would be to go into the BIOS and see if there is a USB auto setting for the USB3 ports.

If it is set to USB3, you normally can't boot from a USB3 port.

USB3 might be the default setting.

The auto setting allows the ports to function as either USB3 ports when you are in windows, and the USB3 drivers are loaded, or as USB2 ports when not in Windows (such as when you need to boot from a USB flash drive).

[GB_Joe]

Thanks Paul

So, there was an option marked USB3 which was checked. I unchecked it, but no change.

Then I looked at the boot mode which was set to Legacy. There are also two UEFI options (hybrid with CSM and Native without CSM), so I thought I'd try one of them.

Sure enough, in either case the USB drive was recognised and I got the expected Ubuntu option menu. Sadly, any option here rsulted in a kernel panic... and it was no longer possible to boot into Windows if I didn't choose to boot from USB.

I'm looking into this on the Ubuntu forums, but I've not found anything which describes my exact situation yet... I'm a bit surprised that the laptop came setup in "Legacy" mode out of the box, and I'm thinking that this may be the root of the problem, although I'm clearly far from being an expert in this stuff.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

If your notebook came with W7 Pro installed from the factory, secure boot has to be disabled in the BIOS.

In most notebooks, the only way to disable secure boot is to enable legacy mode.

W7 is not compatible with secure boot.

[GB_Joe]

Okaaay... so... I have to be in legacy mode because I've got W7, but that won't allow me to boot from USB? Yikes...

I wonder; if there was a way to install Ubuntu whilst in UEFI mode would I be able to switch back to Legacy after?

I'm really feeling out of my depth here...

[Paul_Tikkanen]

I guess you can always give that a try.

For example, if your notebook had come with W8.1 or W10 from the factory, legacy mode would have been disabled and secure boot would have been enabled.

W8.1/W10 would work just fine if you changed the BIOS to legacy mode and disabled secure boot.

[GB_Joe]

Well, I've fixed this one - thanks for your help!

I managed to get my hands on a 2GB USB stick (rather than the external HDD I had been using) and this was recognised fine by the laptop in Legacy mode. It occured to me that the partitions on the HDD may have been causing problems, and it looks like this was probably the case.

Thanks again,

Joe.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome, Joe.

Glad the USB flash drive booted for you.