HP has different options with different models of computers, using F9, F10 and other options. The screen you indicated showing below is what I see on my newer HP.

That is the BIOS Firmware which you get to using the F10 key, at least on my computer. When you boot, do yo see a message at the bottom left of the screen telling you to use the Esc (or another) key to access boot options? Do you see any message briefly, usually only about 3 seconds. On my HP, I can access the BIOS firmware page you refer to by either tapping the Esc key then selecting the F10 key or by repeatedly tapping the F10 key w/o Esc.

The only screen I see with different options is using the Esc key.

Since you can get to the BIOS firmware where you can make a permanent change (F10), use the options I explained in my previous post to make the change. I've been using UEFI on HP computers and have never been able to change the boot order with efibootmgr.

I expect you do not have a manual for the machine as most manufacturers don't distribute them with the computer. You might try an online search for a manual for your specific computer.

Having numerous keys to access options is confusing but that is the way it is. It seems each manufacturer has different keys for the same options and I know that HP has different keys for the same options on differnt computers.


I'm not sure I'm reading the above quote correctly, how would you expect the USB to boot if it isn't plugged?

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There might be something wrong with the ubuntu installation. From the live usb use boot-repair to post the results.txt of your system, don't use the repair option.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

i am writing down my own user's manual at the moment. i know what is on the f2 page and the f9 page and the f10 page, but i tried four times today to get into f9 and i couldnt...that is the hardest part for me, making those keys do something. i believe i did try to find a user's manual online because that is the first thing i always do. i am one of those people who cant do anything without instructions. i try, and once in a while i can stumble on things on my own, but not often.

i did once see a message at the bottom of the screen that said f10 would go to bios setup, and i think it was at the bottom of the page f9, which is what i was trying to reach today to confirm that and couldnt do it. but when i saw that message, if i pressed f10 nothing happened, so the only thing i could do at that point was to exit. i am in danger of killing my machine by over-restarting it just trying to get the fn keys to work.

the thing is, and thank you for confirming the efimanager wouldnt work, because that is the part that didnt make any sense to me...that i could make the boot order any way i wanted to, it didnt matter-because it booted from the flash anyway, even when the boot order was changed back to the default. it also assigned different numbers for my flash drive, which complicated things further. so now i know whatever changes i thought i was making were not even happening. efimanager also showed me that i had a windows boot manager, and called 'ubuntu' a boot manager, and if it wasnt for the letters 'ssd' i wouldnt have been able to recognize my computer. so that must be bogus altogether, and i was trying to reconcile those terms and that list with f10 and f9 and i was totally baffled.

on the hp bios setup utility screen (f10), under the heading of Boot Options, they list (in this order) OS Boot Manager, USB Flash Drive/USB Hard Disk, USB/DVD ROM Drive, and !USB Network Adapter. it explains what the exclamation point means, but what exactly is the OS Boot Manager? and why and how could a choice be both USB Flash Drive and USB Hard Disk? oh...maybe that is like a standalone ssd or something? CD/DVD, i get that, i dont have any and i dont know if i have a network adapter. but where is the hp SSD in that list?

so i am able to boot from the flash and apparently i dont have to worry about the boot order, since the installer asks me if i want to boot from the live drive. of course i guess there is also the possibility that if i wanted to install something other than ubuntu or lubuntu it wouldnt have that option in the installer.

my flash drive is lubuntu 22.04 but what is now on my hp is ubuntu 22.04-which one should i be looking at?

i have the usb flash i used to install ubuntu but so far i hadnt been able to get it to boot again, which i was trying to check in case i wanted to do a reinstall. i remember something creepy happened when i installed it but i dont remember what it was. and from prior notes i think it may have started to do something, there were a whole screen full of errors and then it started to install and then it hung up and wouldnt go any further. and if i remember correctly, i had to poweroff the machine (the bad way). i was afraid to try it again after that.

i have tomes of notes because i was struggling from the beginning with issues and screen printing tons of terminal readouts trying to find out what might be wrong but i wasnt able to identify anything. i think something screwy happened with snap d, and my ubuntu store disappeared too, which i didnt need anyway because i use synaptic and apt.

i looked at the url and i can just install the boot-repair thing, cant i? i dont want to take a chance on putting the flash in and causing some kind of catastrophe...i mean i can use the command line to add the whole thing in one command, does it look ok to you?

So, you are able to boot the ubuntu installation on the internal drive, a lubuntu flash drive that boots, and a ubuntu flash drive that did boot and now doesn't, is that correct?

yes, i think you have stated the situation correctly.
i definitely can boot from the internal drive, and many times after that (which was a fresh install nuking windows) while i was trying to solve and find more information on some things that were working weird, when i tried the lubuntu flash drive it did nothing at all but just sit there, until the other day when it finally booted...and i think the only time the ubuntu flash drive worked was when i used it at the time i installed it on the hp...i had also tried it several times after that, when it also did not respond at all. when it finally did, i didnt like how it behaved and then it got stuck, so i quit trying.

i have been doing some innocuous things trying to get it to work clean, like for instance i had a bad ppa at one point and had to spend a lot of time trying to get rid of that before i could do it...i was also unable to do any updates twice, but i managed to resolve that twice...and login problems, modem problems. so there have been small changes going on since i first installed (august 1). the splash screen has changed dramatically, but i cant read it other than the asci something or other, which i researched and found a lot of people get, but it isnt important. the other thing after that i cant read, it is just too fast, and i never found out a way to read it from a log.

That contains a list of installed operating systems. As I explained above, if you access the BIOS firmware with F10 and arrow down to OS Boot Manager to highlight it, if you hit the Enter key you should see entries for Ubuntu and Windows. The windows entry will still be there even though you overwrote the windows install on the drive, removing it is a different process.

The best way to do this is to use the 2nd option described on the page, using the ppa method. Read through the page first so you understand it. The ppa is kept more updated than the iso download. Also, do NOT try to make any repairs before posting the output or url here as that could make things worse. Use the Create BootInfo Summary option only.

If you can no longer boot the flash drive you used to install Ubuntu, it could have gone bad. Try it on another computer if you can to confirm or eliminate that possibility.

You might be able to determine problems by looking at the various log files which are in the /var/log directory.

If you are having problems with a ppa, best to just comment it out int the /etc/apt/sources.list file. You do that by putting a hash mark (#) at the beginning of the line so it isn't read.

On both my HP laptops, I can access either the Boot Options (F9) or BIOS firmware (F10) by first tapping the Esc key, then selecting either F9 or F10. You might try that although I don't know that will work as HP as a number of different options for different computers.

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What did you use to put ubuntu iso onto the usb?

i had my old dell at the time, which of course had ubuntu but it was 18.04, and i had this hp laptop with windows 11. i had the option of using either one to create the flash. i am so sorry to say that i really dont remember which machine i used. i doubt if i installed any software, although i had been considering etcher. i must have used whatever was on ubuntu 18.04 if i used the dell, and whatever was on windows 11 if i used the hp. i remember seeing the legacy and uefi stuff on the screen while i was creating it, which i had never even heard of until then-so if ubuntu 18.04 didnt have any of that, then i had to have used windows.

but i do have the .iso for ubuntu 22.04, so i could always just create a new flash on the hp of course...oh, i had to learn to erase the old flash drive before i could make it, so i might even have done something wrong there too. i didnt make any partitions, the installer did everything-i started with a completely empty usb. if i did a bad install on this machine though, would it be a bad idea to try and use it to create a new flash drive?

i attached a screen shot of the disk if that will help you. i was a basket case at the time...the internet is my lifeline to reality...now that i think about it, i may have forgotten to check the iso before i made the flash...i know i checked lubuntu because i have the notes for that...but i dont even remember downloading the .iso for 22.04.

the dell is dead and buried now by the way, so i have no option to use that for anything. i have nothing but this laptop and this forum.

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i will install the boot repair thing but probably not tonight, i am too tired-brain fog sets in around this time of day.

which log files would be important to look at? i have run the /var/log in the terminal, but it all runs in a single print...and i would have to go back in time to when i did the install, wouldnt i? maybe there is a way of looking at the files for a particular day...i know it was august 1...

That was going to be my next question, did you check to see if the iso was a good download? Have you checked the filesystem for errors?

the .iso, no, i think not...but this would be the first time, i just got caught up in a rush...i will check it and get back to you.

how do i check the filesystem for errors? you mean fsck? is this site ok:
https://www.maketecheasier.com/check...m-fsck-linux/?

i want to make sure i know what to do because it is scary to mess with the actual computer drive...it says something about not using it on a mounted disk, and it mentioned checking the home file, but i dont know what file to check either...i wanted to ask you first if that is what you want and how to do it.

i like fsck, it's a nifty thing, when my dell had its heart attack and wouldnt boot i managed to get it going with that, but it had only a short time to live...

i have the txt file from the boot-repair app, only i dont know how to find it...i know it is in /var/log but i dont know how to get to it in the directory.

i ran dmesg and it is a mile long, but i could see the splash screen messages, i recognized them...i think there are two different issues and it had (bug) written there so maybe they are totally unimportant and not related to this issue. i attached screen prints anyway just in case...

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attached prints show sha256sum...

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With windows right-click usbdrive>properties>tools>check

with linux use dosfsck
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dosfsc...with-examples/