Old Satellite won't boot from USB or Disc

[emckechnie]

I have an old Toshiba Satellite a105 that I'm trying to boot from either DVD-R or USB to try various flavors of Linux. It won't boot, even though I've changed the boot order each time. Can anyone offer advice? The advice on the list already is for a newer Toshiba, mine doesn't have those features.

 

[emckechnie]

My issue hasn't been solved, although I think the problem might be the downloads themselves. Our wireless access in my home isn't all that great. I'm going to try again later when my Linux for Dummies book arrives along with a disk.

 

[L3iGH]

Let me know how it goes. I'm also working with an older Toshiba Satellite and have run into some trouble with it booting from USB and DVD as well, but only when a new HDD with no OS installed. Trying to install an image from either USB or DVD. It doesn't do it with my other HDD that have various OSs on them.

Is the drive you're trying to load Linux on new or blank? Or are you running it live from disc or maybe with dual OS?

 

[emckechnie]

I found that while my downloaded USB's worked okay on my other computer (newer HP), they wouldn't boot the Toshiba. My own downloaded DVD's didn't work on either machine, so I think there was something wrong with my downloading. What did work was when I bought a Linux magazine "The Best of Linux" that had copies of 5 flavors of Linux: Fedora, Mint, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Magaeia, that my machine booted just fine and I was able to run them all. This was a live boot onto a Win98 computer.

When I ran the various systems I found that Mint worked perfectly and OpenSUSE worked very well (and I liked it better). I'll be running it live a few more times before deciding what to install. I'd prefer not to have a dual boot, since this is a really old laptop used mostly for internet while travelling (when we aren't using our new Ipads).