Question Old Toshiba Satellite boot menu can't install Linux from ISO file on USB memory?

[Andy Kay]

I have a very old laptop that I thought would be suitable for Linux Mint so I found the boot menu but can't make sense of it. Details are as follows:

Toshiba Stallite U300-14B
Model PSU30E-04M01SEN
Microsoft Vista Home Premium

Startup give message "Operating System not found"

F2 gets me into the boot menu which shows:

Boot Priority order:
LAN: LAN
CD/DVD: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-U10N-(
Excluded from boot order:

=======

Would I be correct in assuming that this device is too old to boot from a USB memory stick?

 

[BFG-9000]

No. An .iso file is inherently unbootable, so you'd have to either use burning software to burn the image to optical disk, or use a utility such as Rufus to convert it to a bootable USB.

Also keep in mind that such an old machine is unlikely to be able to boot from a USB stick larger than 32GB.

 

[Andy Kay]

No. An .iso file is inherently unbootable, so you'd have to either use burning software to burn the image to optical disk, or use a utility such as Rufus to convert it to a bootable USB.

Also keep in mind that such an old machine is unlikely to be able to boot from a USB stick larger than 32GB.

Thanks BFG. I did actually burn the ISO file to a USB using Balena Etcher (forgot to mention that), but it's not clear to me from the format of the boot menu how I choose "boot from USB."

Having said that, I do have another old laptop with a DVD burner on it, that is running Win10 so that might do the trick. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[TerryLaze]

F2 is the fast boot menu you have to go into bios itself and look at what options you have there to populate the fast boot menu with, often USB will be bunched up into the hard drives and you will have to go to the hdd sub menu and select the usb drive there.
Or it will have several USB options in the main boot menu like usb-floppy usb-optical usb-zip usb-hdd.

 

[Andy Kay]

F2 is the fast boot menu you have to go into bios itself and look at what options you have there to populate the fast boot menu with, often USB will be bunched up into the hard drives and you will have to go to the hdd sub menu and select the usb drive there.
Or it will have several USB options in the main boot menu like usb-floppy usb-optical usb-zip usb-hdd.

Thanks for that Terry. I'm not sure how to get into the bios... I've tried using the following keys immediately after starting up: F1 through F12, 0, CR, ESC, and DEL. The only key that has any effect is F2 which, as you say, gets me into the fast boot menu.

 

[Andy Kay]

Having said that, I do have another old laptop with a DVD burner on it, that is running Win10 so that might do the trick. Thanks for the suggestion.

Success! So we move on to the next roadblock... Linux Mint requires 16.1 GB of HDD and the laptop only has 750 MB (yes it's that old). I'll investigate Linux Puppy. Thanks for your help.

 

[kerberos_20]

Success! So we move on to the next roadblock... Linux Mint requires 16.1 GB of HDD and the laptop only has 750 MB (yes it's that old). I'll investigate Linux Puppy. Thanks for your help.

you can install linux on usb stick

 

[Andy Kay]

you can install linux on usb stick

I can't find how to enter bios to make it load from USB, so I only have the CD/DVD option as far as I can tell.