Question USB Boot no longer possible on HP Pavilion X2 12-b020nr 12

[noobfrank02]

Hi all,

I have been trying out several flavors of linux OS lately. Dual booting and have had some fun and learned a lot.

I installed another new version just the other day and all went well. During boot I can choose what OS I want and all works (GRUB).
BUT - next I tried to boot to a USB drive to look at another OS - I hit esc like normal and then F9 like normal. But the familiar black with blue screen listing my boot options - where I would select USB is just not there. It is a blank black screen. Nothing happens. Eventually I have to hit ctrl+alt+del and it reboots and it will boot into the OS selection screen and everything works. I went into bios and confirmed USB boot was enabled. Switched off and back on for good measure. Still nothing. This sounds really weird.

Any ideas?
Thanks!
Frank

 

[Lutfij]

Are you on the latest BIOS for your laptop? Can you mention what the other OS on the pendrive was? Does it work on a donor system?

 

[Prostar Computer]

Try power cycling the laptop to reset the firmware. It could be a minor hiccup, it happens fairly often.

To reset, remove all power (battery & AC adapter), press + hold the power button for 10 seconds, then reconnect power and test again.

And make sure it isn't the drive giving you trouble or that particular Linux distro. I'm not sure if you're running UEFI or Legacy BIOS, but some distros might not play well with the former.

 

[noobfrank02]

Well - It is back to working. So - I replaced the SSD with a larger SSD. I installed Win10 on the new SSD. I updated the Bios and I now have sucessfully installed a bunch of other OS's. I am now set as a quad boot Win10/Deepin Linux/X86 android1 and X86 Android 2.

So - I wouldn't say this is a solution to follow but it might offer clues to the root cause. All I can guess is that the EFI partition or boot file size must get crowded with old installs of OS's. So if I had the problem again I would probably copy my personal data off the drive - format it - reinstall windows (mostly to auto create the EFI partition) copy my personal data back over and start over. That would probably work...

Anyway - thanks for the help.
Frank

 

[Prostar Computer]

Thanks for the follow up, Frank!