# Lenovo Y510p Won't Boot From USB



## hackitfast (Apr 27, 2011)

I'm trying to install a copy of Windows 8 from a USB drive onto my cousin's Lenovo Y510p. The reason I'm doing it is because I installed a Samsung 840 Evo 256GB SSD into his Optical Drive slot. The only issue now is that the computers BIOS and Boot Options fail to even recognize the USB drive. I've tried two different ones, both failing. I've tried to create a bootable drive using Microsoft's own bootable USB tool for Windows installs, and I've also tried using rufus to make these USB drives bootable.

As a heads up, I've tried disabling Safe Boot but it did nothing at all. I'm rather annoyed at the fact that it is this hard to simply boot from a little USB drive.

How can I go about installing Windows 8 on the solid state drive? I'd prefer not putting it in another machine in order to do so.


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## lairju1 (Dec 21, 2013)

I'm having this same issue. I contacted them, and they're sending a recovery disc, but I'm going to be out of town when it arrives, so I'm trying to figure out how to get it to work. If you have a CD burner, a CD version should work.


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## BIGBEARJEDI (Aug 8, 2012)

hackitfast: 

As lairju1 states, what about installing from CD, or is this one of those netbooks that comes without a burner drive? 

If this is the case, you can buy a USB external DVD drive for about $30 on Newegg or Amazon; I have one and do OS installs all the time this way on netbooks or ultrabooks that don't have internal optical drives. 

BTW, USB installs of Windows are not trivial; I've been doing this for 30 years plus and I have yet to get a USB Install from flash drive on ANY version of windows to work on any brand of laptop or netbook! I've gotten close with WindowsXP a couple of times; but ran into failed hardware (bad SSD drive and bad Motherboards). 

I would go with a dvd install version first. 

On the USB flash drive install, did you check to see if the Lenovo has a UEFI BIOS option? If it does, you'll most likely have to disable it in order to get it to work with that SSD. Many laptop manufacturers are not making their BIOSes compatabile with SSD drives--just because you want the SSD drive to work on a laptop, doesn't mean it will--since it's still not a mature technology. If that particular Model Lenovo has UEFI and wasn't incorporated with SSD boot drive capability, it will never work regardless of what Windows8 media you attempt to install! I would go to the Lenovo website and verify you have the latest BIOS update on that laptop. Sometimes, laptop makers will incorporate the SSD fixes required into newer BIOS updates. Have you done this yet? 

If you have done the BIOS update to the Lenovo, and it still doesn't work you will need to actually use the phone and CALL lenovo tech support and have them look up the exact model your are using (the Y510p) and verify with them that their BIOS will support a SSD boot drive or not. If they say no, you can forget about using SSD in that lenovo laptop. Simply replace with a traditional 80GB hard drive or larger, and Windows8 will work. Who knows, it might even work via a USB flash drive install if you're lucky.

A lot of folks here on TSF simply assume that since SSD technology is out there, that they can just buy a drive and install it on any computer they want and it will work. Like I said before it won't. Furthermore, you'll have to provide a really good reason for using the SSD on your cousin's laptop. Not one of the Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. are using laptops for their mobile workforce employees that use SSD bootdrive technologies due to this exact issue you are having. Not to mention the reliability of these devices is about 50% of the lifespan of traditional hard drive mature technology in laptops. 

Perhaps, you can find out why your Cousin needs the SSD or why you chose to install it, and rethink it. If you take my advice and call lenovo and they tell you that model of laptop won't support it you won't have a choice. If your Couz insists he has to have it, you should convince him to sell that lenovo and find another laptop that comes WITH the SSD bootdrive configuration and use that!

BIGBEARJEDI


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## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

Hi here is the user manual see page 30 you may need to change from UEFI to Legacy http://download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles_pub/ideapad_y410py510p_ug_english.pdf
this is the drivers page Drivers and software - IdeaPad Y510p Notebook
this is the service manual Hardware Maintenance Manual - IdeaPad Y410p, Y510p


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## hackitfast (Apr 27, 2011)

Sorry for the late response, but thanks for the help! What I did to solve the issue was to use an external DVD drive, and burn the Windows 8 image to a DVD. I then set the SSD as the primary HDD and put the 1TB Samsung HDD inside the caddy as the secondary hard drive. I was able to boot from the external DVD drive via USB and install Windows 8 without any issues.

Thanks again!
- hackitfast


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## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

Glad you got it sorted


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## BIGBEARJEDI (Aug 8, 2012)

Yes, glad it worked out for you!!
:noel:
Happy holidays!


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## JSANGS (Feb 27, 2014)

For other people having this same issue, it can be done without using a cd or turning your laptop to legacy mode.

The problem lies with the fact that the newer UEFI bios does not recognize MBR partitions. In order to boot off the usb device using UEFI you need to erase the usb key and recreate the partitions using GPT, formatted then with FAT32.

There is a program that does this for you, just like the win7 usb download tool called RUFUS that I use that handles this procedure.


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## chas.river (Apr 21, 2008)

JSANGS said:


> For other people having this same issue, it can be done without using a cd or turning your laptop to legacy mode.
> 
> The problem lies with the fact that the newer UEFI bios does not recognize MBR partitions. In order to boot off the usb device using UEFI you need to erase the usb key and recreate the partitions using GPT, formatted then with FAT32.
> 
> There is a program that does this for you, just like the win7 usb download tool called RUFUS that I use that handles this procedure.


Will a RUFUS-formatted USB drive boot from either BIOS or UEFI?


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## JSANGS (Feb 27, 2014)

you can make a rufus formatted drive for each type of system, either uefi or bios. But you will need two drives to do it correctly. One drive for each one


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