Question

Why is it so difficult to boot an HP PC with USB and Linux?

Asked by: RTapley

I am not sure if I am doing something silly but I am having lots of people booting a PC for either imaging or erasure! So I thought I would come to the experts for adivce!!

We have nearly all HP desktops and laptops.

Recently I have been taked with testing and designing a rollout for some erausre software we have to use (Kroll Ontrack Eraser). This boots a Linux OS through PXE or CD or USB to run the erasure.

I have been trying to get the USB side working with no luck.

If I use their utility to create the USB stick it won't boot!

The only way I can get USB sticks to boot from is to use the HP USB format utility is there any other way?

Any help is greatly appreciated, I will check back regularly as need to try and get this resolved as soon as possible!

Thanks

Richard

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Asked On
2009-09-24 at 08:05:21ID24758712
Topics

Linux Setup

,

Ubuntu

,

Personal Computers

Participating Experts
4
Points
20
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: fmarzoccaPosted on 2009-09-24 at 08:09:14ID: 25414138

 

by: RTapleyPosted on 2009-09-25 at 00:46:53ID: 25420762

fmarzocca,

I don't mean to sound bumb but my knowledge of Linux is extremely little if any. I have installed it through the automatic process but that is about it, I have never had the time to continue playing with it sadly to get to know/understand it!

Also.... I may have worded my question badly. apologies if that is the case!

I have tried many times to create a bootable USB for HP desktops (mainly newer machines (DC7800 and DC7900 but also some others)) and they so often fail to even recognise the usb stick on bootup. BUt when I use the HP format util it recognises them straight away and boots.

The immeadiate problem I have is needing to boot a Linux OS from USB that is created from the suppliers application. If there was a way to start Linux from DOS that would be a start?

If I have entered the question in the wrong section then please let me know how I can move it if that is required.

Many thanks

Richard

 

by: jjr16Posted on 2009-09-29 at 11:39:23ID: 25451921

The problem is that booting from USB and how it is done can vary between BIOS and/or system manufacturers and even some USB flash drives work differently. So what would be best is to use what you know works. There are a few ways to boot Linux from DOS. So to get it working right you want to reproduce what the Kroll utility created and revise that for booting off of the HP formatted USB stick. It would be best to format as FAT32 and make it bootable with FreeDOS (www.freedos.org) or MS-DOS (using Windows 9x startup disks). Then figure out what boot loader the Kroll utility used and we can work from there to find out how it was setup and convert that to be used with a DOS-based boot loader like Gujin (http://gujin.sourceforge.net/) or GRUB4DOS (https://gna.org/projects/grub4dos) or linld. Once you know what boot loader is used you want to also see if any boot parameters are used or not. Then using an existing Linux installation (could also use LiveCD distro if no installation desired) copy the entire contents of the Krolly created drive to the HP formatted drive. Then let us know if you need more help.

 

by: pavarPosted on 2009-11-27 at 07:24:24ID: 25921291

Depending on the bios and the utility with which you format, the usb stick might be recognized either as usb FDD or USB HDD. Usually linux based sticks are recognized as USB- FDD, but Dell is skittish with their options.  Boot a pc/laptop with the stick attached, enter bios menu, under boot options set as primary USB-FDD. Save and reboot. If it doesn't work, enter the bios again and set as first boot device USB-HDD.  These options might vary depending on each computer bios, since as i understand from your post, your computers are not all the same. Also try entering the boot menu (usually F8 or F12) and manually selecting the usb stick. it might be recognized, just not auto-booting. keep in mind that if the stick has no label, it might appear as a blank line under the last entry in the menu

 

by: zr1ls9Posted on 2010-01-20 at 18:31:44ID: 26366380

Try making a bootable USB drive with Unetbootin and see if that works I am using ubuntu on an older HP desktop using this method.

 

by: RTapleyPosted on 2010-02-16 at 02:01:14ID: 26578847

I sincerely apologise for not responding sooner.

I tried the solution by zr1ls9 and it got me the closeest. I am sorry I did not respond, sooner after getting to that stage I was told I was being made redundant and so other problems took over.

Apologies and thanks for your assistance.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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