can't boot with USB stick

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dcc701
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed 23 Apr 2014, 07:40
Location: Seattle, US

can't boot with USB stick

#1 Post by dcc701 »

On Dell Latitude D630 4G RAM, with no hard drive.
This machine boots fine with CD of tahr pup 6.0.2, everything working.

Using the puppy installer, did the routine with formatting and saving to a 4G USB stick. This included making two partitions on the stick: 3G fat32 for storage, and 1G ext3 which I flagged for boot. Then installed puppy on the boot partition. During my first shut-down, I also again saved to the USB stick, I believe.

Everything seemed hunky-dory.

On restarting, I set BIOS (I think version A19 if I remember right) to boot (1) USB device and (2) CD drive. Disabled the HDD boot option.

But this Dell does NOT want to boot from the usb stick. When it says "USB device" in BIOS I'm guessing it's not talking about USB sticks.

Furthermore, upon trying restart again and again with different options, I found that the machine would never boot from the CD drive as long as the USB stick was plugged in, regardless of boot order. Also, the machine every time gives a warning about "missing hard drive" even though the hard drive boot was disabled in BIOS.

Anything I'm doing wrong? Anything else to try? I'd really like to do this on USB stick instead of ad cdr or dvdr, because I've read that the disc strategy can be problematic on laptops for a couple reasons.

Thanks for any ideas.

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bigpup
Posts: 13886
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Location: S.C. USA

#2 Post by bigpup »

Having Tahrpup on the second partition may be causing problems.
Some computers only look at the first partition for operating systems.

At power on boot start of Computer.
Hit F12 key.
This is suppose to bring up a boot device selection screen.
See if you are offered some better device options.

Are you sure you did get Tahrpup installed on the USB stick?

You should have basically the same stuff that is on the CD.

Just to be as simple as possible.
Us Gparted.
Partition the USB stick as one partition formatted fat 32.
Flag as boot.

Reinstall Tahrpup using the Puppy Universal Installer.
make sure you are selecting the correct install option and device.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

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bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#3 Post by bigpup »

the machine every time gives a warning about "missing hard drive" even though the hard drive boot was disabled in BIOS.
This message is probably because you did disable hard drive boot in bios.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

dcc701
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed 23 Apr 2014, 07:40
Location: Seattle, US

#4 Post by dcc701 »

Hi bigpup
Thanks for ideas and advice.
Your idea of just "keeping it simple" worked.
I was confused, apparently, by reading lots of advice about file system types and partitioning, and was assuming that I had to do more setup myself.

In fact, the USB stick was already fat32 to begin with, and the "universal installer" took me every step of the way for what I needed.

BTW before I took your advice, I tried most of the "bootflash usb installer" options as well, but none of them worked for me, so apparently it was NOT a problem of my computer not recognizing a flash drive as a potential boot. So now that I know that my computer WILL recognize flash as booter, your hunch on my computer not recognizing an sda2 partition as boot (my first failed attempt) may still have been correct.

However, my computer upon start still spends a few seconds hung up on the fact that it has no hard drive, whether or not HDD is even enabled in the boot order (I've tried it both ways, in other words). Not a big problem, though!

Again, thanks.

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bigpup
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#5 Post by bigpup »

You should still be able to partition the USB flash drive in a Linux format and get it to boot.

If you make more than one partition , just put the Puppy install on the first partition and have that first partition flagged as boot.
On Dell Latitude D630 4G RAM, with no hard drive.
I need to read more carefully. :shock: :lol:

You have no hard drive.

The bios is always going to look for one. That is something it expects to find.
So, the boot hard drive message is normal, if you do not have one installed.

The section of the bios that deals with devices.
Is all the information about a hard drive empty?
Guessing that may eliminate the boot message.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

cthisbear
Posts: 4422
Joined: Sun 29 Jan 2006, 22:07
Location: Sydney Australia

#6 Post by cthisbear »

Dell Bios Tutorial Latitude D630

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdUDjC4JLIQ

Chris.

dcc701
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed 23 Apr 2014, 07:40
Location: Seattle, US

#7 Post by dcc701 »

bigpup--thanks for further info. Will tinker with that in future.
cthisbear--thanks for tutorial link, watched it.

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