Hi all I’m hoping that you will be able to give some guidance to this complete Linux newbie.
Outside of doing some initial reading about how to create a bootable USB of Linux mint, I am a novice Linux user.
I have a Windows 10 computer and like many I am interested in finally biting the bullet and transitioning away from that big giant company, and my plan was to create a dual boot machine on my distinguishing windows machine while I transition. I have a clean separate hard drive that I was going to install Linux on, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. I downloaded Linux mint 22.1 and tried a couple of ways of putting it on a USB drive with the understanding that I would boot from the USB drive and install onto the extra hard drive on the computer. But I haven’t been successful.
At first I followed the instructions that I found online that told me to use etcher to flash the ISO onto the USB drive. That didn’t seem to work as it only put a couple of folders on it and while it was recognized in BIOS, it wouldn’t boot from it.
I saw somewhere else online that indicated there should be a bunch of different folders on the install media, and I noticed that if I were to mount the ISO as a CD Rom drive in Windows, I could see that it includes those files. So I had the bright idea of trying to copy and paste the mounted CD-ROM drive over on to the USB drive. However now the USB drive doesn’t appear as a bootable device in the boot menu of BIOS. But when the he USB is plugged in, it just goes to a black screen to forever. I have to unplug the he USB to get back to Windows.
I did see somewhere online that suggested that I checked my BIOS UFEI and secure boot settings and they seem right? Secure boot is disabled and the UFEI settings are set to allow both legacy and UFCI boot. I’m not sure where to go from here. I also know about making sure the he bootable drive is first I’m the boot order, but the only time it appeared in the BIOS menu, it wasn’t a bootable drive. What should I check next?
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Thanks for the detailed information, it really makes diagnosing easier.
The USB drive needs certain bits set to make it appear as bootable, which is why just copying the files over didn’t work.
Its possible that etcher did work. The USB probably had a boot partition with a few files, and a main partition with most of the files. Windows has a habit of only showing you the first partition, so you wouldn’t have been able to see most of the files.
If you want another option for making a bootable USB, I’ve found Ventoy to be fairly easy and reliable at making bootable USBs (and has a cool additional feature you may like). Only about half of the programs to write USBs have worked for me, so I recommend trying a few.
If the USB shows up as a bootable option in BIOS then it’s probably good. Turning off secure boot can help, but probably isn’t the main problem. Mint can boot with UEFI, so legacy isn’t necessary.
It looks to me like you have everything correct. My best guess for now is to just keep trying different USB writers. Please let me know if you notice any other symptoms.
Thank you all for your tips - Ventoy did the trick and I succesfully booted into a Linux Mint installer. :) I can’t wait!
I found the easiest way was to get a new drive for Linux, install a boot loader there, and use that in BIOS. That way, Windows has it’s own bootloader it can trash anytime it wants and it does not mess with Linux…
Here is a list of live usb makers. I have successfully used UUI, #5 on the list, and also have successfully used this in the past. I’m running kubuntu/win 10 dual boot, prolly not recommended but, I installed linux on a separate drive to win 10 and put its boot loader there (idea being windows update won’t mess with a drive it can’t read) so when I boot I have, for the moment, win 10 as first boot device and when I want to get into linux simply hit f8, or what ever your “choose boot device” is, choose the linux drive and go, next month I’ll need to switch the order.
and while it was recognized in BIOS, it wouldn’t boot from it.
What exactly happened here? This approach should usually have worked.
The first thing I would suggest to do is verify the checksum of the ISO that you downloaded. I think you can use 7zip to calculate the SHA256 checksum on Windows.
Instead of trying to manually create a bootable USB disk, I would suggest to try a different tool, e.g. Fedora Image Writer.
If possible, you could also try a different USB stick and a different computer to troubleshoot the issue.
When I was in the BIOS, I could see the USB drive as a bootable device. Normally when I click on my Windows drive, it will leave BIOS and immediately boot Windows. When I did that with the USB drive, it just immediately returns to the BIOS screen I was on. If I were to let the computer boot without going into BIOS, it just boots to Windows (even though the USB is set to be first.)
Ok, so you didn’t even get to the bootloader (Step 4 here: https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/boot.html). Indeed it seems most likely that your USB drive was not created correctly. I would go with the steps I pointed out above to debug the issue.
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