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Distribution: openSUSE, Raspbian, Slackware. Previous: MacOS, Red Hat, Coherent, Consensys SVR4.2, Tru64, Solaris
Posts: 2,803
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Toshiba laptop won't boot "live" DVD
I've been trying to demo Linux on the missus's Toshiba laptop to no avail. I've gotten into the BIOS and set the boot order to DVD first followed by hard disk. When powering up the system, there is a brief flurry of activity on the DVD drive but ultimately goes ahead and boots Win7 from the hard disk. The Live DVD I'm trying to boot is a Debian Live DVD that I've previously been able to boot from on a system that doesn't have any Windows presence at all. (I haven't yet downloaded any other live ISOs to test with.)
Is there a trick to get Toshibas to boot from the DVD drive?
My first thought is to test the DVD in another computer to rule out the DVD as a possible culprit. Even though you've used it before, there's always a chance that it's been damaged or deteriorated in some way.
It's been so long since I had a Toshiba, I am not competent to comment on that part of your question.
IDK but: is UEFI (secure boot) involved? Does F12 help? Tosh model? Can you try a USB stick? Disable HDD in BIOS?
Here's something I found about two more BIOS things to 'fix':
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When you press F2 and go into setup, you of course have already put the CDrom or DVDram in top priority. Then, the thing is you have to go to 2 options to the left, and generally you will find [Quick Boot] option enabled, disable it, and [F12 boot menu] or something like that option disabled, ENABLE it, then exit saving changes, and press F12 like there’s no tomorrow, it will then ask you from where you want to boot, choose wisely, and hallelujah !
Try a CD.
Try to see bios for boot order. Is it a uefi choice?
Create a ubuntu server dvd and try it.
Windows has a few things that block boot. Did you go through the advanced troubleshooting to get to an optical drive boot choice?
Fastboot disable.
Distribution: openSUSE, Raspbian, Slackware. Previous: MacOS, Red Hat, Coherent, Consensys SVR4.2, Tru64, Solaris
Posts: 2,803
Original Poster
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Originally Posted by ___
IDK but: is UEFI (secure boot) involved?
Don't know. I stay away from Windows as much as humanly possible.
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Does F12 help? Tosh model? Can you try a USB stick? Disable HDD in BIOS?
Pressing f12 during the boot process did nothing except to begin emitting beeps once it has had been pressed a few times. "Fast boot" had already been disabled. The laptop in question is a Satellite. I haven't been able to try mucking around with the laptop until now (tax season is finally over so I'm not getting in the way of those getting done.)
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Please do let 'us' know what the resolution is!
No resolution yet.
Thinking that the DVD might be flawed in some way, I downloaded the Live ISO directly onto the laptop (over 2GHz wifi that takes forever) with the goal of burning one on the laptop itself. Doesn't make much sense to me as the DVD I burned previously booted on my desktop system without any problems (other than it being pretty slow to load). But, worth a try and only costs a blank and some time.
If I spend too much more time on this laptop, I may be lobbying for the missus to get a Mac -- even a used one would be better than the hassle this Toshiba is turning out to be.
Are you turning windows all of the way off? Not just windows hybrid sleep/off mode.
The "Fast Startup" crap arrived with Windows 8.
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Originally Posted by rnturn
When powering up the system, there is a brief flurry of activity on the DVD drive but ultimately goes ahead and boots Win7 from the hard disk. The Live DVD I'm trying to boot is a Debian Live DVD that I've previously been able to boot from on a system that doesn't have any Windows presence at all.
Sounds like an old laptop running win7? Maybe the CD has to be burned in MBR not GPT? If you don't know what that means have a look at what was used to burn it. I had trouble recently booting from a usb stick and I had to change a few things in the bios like enabling legacy boot and disabling secure boot. The bios gives out many warning about security. Does the bios detect and list the name of the DVD or does it just say "DVD"?
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