My Dell Optiplex refuses to boot an OS from the HDD

[dedicatenit]

Hi all,

I put this under the Windows 10 forum, but it applies to all OS's I've thrown at the thing.

I have a Dell Optiplex 755 which seems to to be rather finicky about the operating systems I'm throwing at it. Now, the system boots perfectly normally and consistently, so I'm not sure it's flaky hardware.

I'm able to boot the latest Ubuntu from USB and it will install without complaint. But when it tries to boot from the HDD it simply freezes at the point where the dots appear on screen, then eventually the screen goes blank and it dies altogether. Interestingly I can boot into the OS if I select the option to try the OS without installing it.

I then tried booting to a Windows 10 USB image, but that simply causes it to hang without messages of any kind. All I see is a blinking cursor in the top left corner of the screen.

Any help you can give would be very much appreciated - Thanks!!

Cheers,

Dennis

 

[The Paladin]

so your doing a new replacement of the previous OS with linux ? or doing a split os install ? what application have you used to install the OS on a USB Stick, did it have the setting for UEFI/BIOS boot or was it only UEFI boot (some Linux OS I found where depending of the version UEFI only and on older non UEFI units can cause it to refuse to install (see this on my OptiPlex 7020 Motherboard myself)

 

[dedicatenit]

Thanks for answering so quickly. That is something to think about - I just checked the options in Rufus and it seems to have "BIOS or UEFI" as the only option when creating a Ubuntu USB, but only UEFI when creating a Windows 10 USB. So there may be something in that.

I just had the brilliant wheeze to try a 32-bit Linux distro. This is the only thing I could think of which may be tripping it up.

Cheers

 

[dedicatenit]

Some success - I loaded Linux Mint *32-bit* and it loaded perfectly. It now boots beautifully. I was wondering if this computer was capable of loading a 64 bit OS, and I now think I have my answer.

I'm now downloading a 32 bit version of Windows 10 to give it a thorough test.

Cheers