# USB Boot ISSUE



## kanade (Nov 12, 2005)

*Not Booting from USB port ISSUE*

Hello 

I have a Mercury Board that has BIOS made by AMI.



AMIBIOS SIMPLE SETUP UTILITY - Version 1.21.12 (C) 2000 American Megatrends.

This is a query regarding BIOS boot option for USB port. 

The PC is a P4 478 pin motherboard manufactured by Mercury it is roughly 14 years old 

MoBo is KOB P4 M 266a NDMx

The pc and all the usb ports work perfectly on win xp, so there is no issue from the hardware side. 

I am trying to install Ubuntu on hdd through USB boot option.

I have prepared a bootable pendrive using standard method recommended for Ubuntu.

The issue is with the USB booting and BIOS options 

so ignoring software part completely .



My bios has 5 boot options as follows

1.USB RMD-HDD,
2.USB RMD-FDD,
3.USB HDD,
4.USB CDROM-HDD,
5.USB FDD

i have used 1st and 3rd options from above but neither of them have worked.


Which of them is right one ?


But the pc is not getting booted from any of these boot options. i have tried on 6 different pendrives but none of them is working.


There are 2 other BIOS settings whtich seems to be related to the USB Boot.

In 'features setup' page in BIOS there are following options related to USB

1.USB Controller
2.USB device legacy support
3. ThumbDrive support for DOS 
(this last option is related to 2 and is disabled by default )

I have enabled them but still the problem persist.

it seems i have missed some other bios settings 
kindly let me the right options of BIOS settings / 

combination of them so that the pc gets booted from the USB pendrive.



Experts please help.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Query No 2.

I have got 4 USB ports. Is there any Numbering system with the USB ports say 0,1,2,3 just like there is for SATA and IDE . 

If Yes

how to identify serial numbers of USB ports 0,1,2,3 etc

Thank you in advance

regards
kanade


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## Panther063 (Jul 13, 2009)

Just a thought, due to it's age, the USB ports may not have power until after boot, so the Thumb Drive may not work.
Is there an indicator light on the Thumb Drive to show it is receiving power?


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## kanade (Nov 12, 2005)

Panther063 said:


> Just a thought, due to it's age, the USB ports may not have power until after boot, so the Thumb Drive may not work.
> Is there an indicator light on the Thumb Drive to show it is receiving power?



Yes It shows it is receiving power.


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

Try one/all of the pen drives on another PC to insure they are in fact set up to boot.


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## kanade (Nov 12, 2005)

*Re: Not Booting from USB port ISSUE*



kanade said:


> Hello
> 
> I have a Mercury Board that has BIOS made by AMI.
> 
> ...


-----------My PC Configuration is -----------

MoBo is KOB P4 M 266a NDMx CPU intel P4 3.06 GHZ
1 GB RAM
O.S Xp 
PC Works perfectly . All usb ports are currently attached to devices and are working perfectly .


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## kanade (Nov 12, 2005)

*Re: Not Booting from USB port ISSUE*



kanade said:


> -----------My PC Configuration is -----------
> 
> MoBo is KOB P4 M 266a NDMx CPU intel P4 3.06 GHZ
> 1 GB RAM
> ...


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## bassfisher6522 (Jul 22, 2012)

It's option #3. I've never had much success in using the Linux Pen Drive utility. I've always used Rufus and it's always worked, even using any Linux Distro. Try rufus and selecting option 3 and see. 

Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way


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## kanade (Nov 12, 2005)

bassfisher6522 said:


> It's option #3. I've never had much success in using the Linux Pen Drive utility. I've always used Rufus and it's always worked, even using any Linux Distro. Try rufus and selecting option 3 and see.
> 
> Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way


Hello Thank you for the same. Now read my experience carefully and comment. I made the pendrive with Rufus . The pc got booted the booting procedure continued . And then when i tried to do it again it simply refusing to boot and giving the 'Boot Failure' message. how come it boot one time and not second time. ?????? i am using ubuntu 14.04 .iso file and kingston 2 gb datatraveller .


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## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

Please use a smaller font size as you look like your shouting which is considered rude in internet etiquette.


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

You could always bypass the boot device order and manually select a device to boot from, from the boot device selection menu. To access the boot device selection menu press the appropriate key during POST. Some systems use f9, f12 etc, so try those two and a menu will appear listing all connected and supported boot devices. The thumb drive should be one of them, select it and boot off of it. 

Since you managed to boot after setting the usb-hdd (3rd option), it is possible the bios usb settings were lost (bios settings restored to default values) because of a dead/low CMOS battery hence the reason it's not booting from the drive again. I would suggest conforming the applied settings actually stick after cold reboot, or just use the device selection menu as earlier directed.


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## kanade (Nov 12, 2005)

Stancestans said:


> You could always bypass the boot device order and manually select a device to boot from, from the boot device selection menu. To access the boot device selection menu press the appropriate key during POST. Some systems use f9, f12 etc, so try those two and a menu will appear listing all connected and supported boot devices. The thumb drive should be one of them, select it and boot off of it.
> 
> Since you managed to boot after setting the usb-hdd (3rd option), it is possible the bios usb settings were lost (bios settings restored to default values) because of a dead/low CMOS battery hence the reason it's not booting from the drive again. I would suggest conforming the applied settings actually stick after cold reboot, or just use the device selection menu as earlier directed.


Hi all Thank you all the experts for guiding. I have been doing the same for quite some time. My current status is as follows.

0. 'Rufus' is working at my end.
1. The boot option working at my end is ' USB RMD-FDD'
2. It is taking only old low capacity pendrives. it is working on 2 gb datatraveller and not newer 8 gb pendrives.

This much part is good for me as it is finally getting booted from USB somehow. 

BUT 

One more annoying part is still remaining experts need to tell me why.

I suspect it is taking fresh installation ONLY. 

I suspect after the first installation the boot sector (MIGHT BE) getting corrupted. As i tried the same booting procedure after the first booting it is giving me the same 'boot failure' message. 

switch off the pc and start pc allover again without changing anything in bios or anything else,
just shut down and switch on the pc for another installation it is giving me the same boot 'failure messge' .

so i prepared the pendrive allover again . and it worked!!!!!

As i am facing some issues in ubuntu installation as well , 
i need to change some settings in installation file on experimental basis and i need to do booting all over again for multiple times. but it is not booting the second time on the same pendrive. 

Ubuntu installation is not the part for this forum. 

So is there any remedy for this issue. 
All i want is the same pendrive should boot for many times 

Experts need to say on why it is happening / remedy if any.


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

Well, that would mean the Ubuntu installation on the thumb drive is getting messed with during the first loading, perhaps something has changed with the process of loading a 'live' session of Ubuntu. I haven't tried Ubuntu 14 just yet, I'm still on 12.02 LTS and I've never used Rufus either, I use unetbootin. Perhaps you could try a lower version of Ubuntu, or unetbootin with your current version of Ubuntu and see if the same problem occurs. Normally, a live session runs from memory (ram) only, but that may change so that part of writable storage is used as a swap area in cases of low ram. A quick test would be to compare the free space of a freshly prepared Ubuntu 14 thumb drive before and after booting from it. If the free space is not the same after booting, that would conform the live session actually adds/removes/modifies something on the thumb drive that prevents it from booting a second time. As far as I know, the live session loading process is read-only (the contents of the thumb drive are loaded onto ram as required and nothing is written on the thumb drive during that process), just like it is the case with booting from a cd.


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