New to Linux. Need help booting from USB
 

Hello, I'm just starting my Linux Journey and have decided to to give Linux Mint Cinnamon a go. There is no particular reason I selected that distro other than it seems to be fairly popular.

I downloaded the Linux Mint Cinnamon x64 ISO and created a USB boot drive using Rufus 4.2 with FAT32, GPT and Non-CSM.

I also tried MBR.

My goal is to install Linux on a portable drive. I 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus installed in an Orico M.2 NVMe enclosure. Windows sees this as a hard drive, not as a USB drive.

I burned the ISO to a Sandisk extreme Go 128GB USB drive. I boot, press F11 to get to boot menu, select the Sandisk drive I've formatted with the Linux ISO and the screen goes blank for a second, then re-displays the boot menu.

(Prior to burning the ISO used diskpart on the Sandisk and deleted all partitions with "clean").

I followed step 2 from here: https://itsfoss.com/install-linux-mint/

Looked at several posts on various sites, but all of them seem to have gotten to at least the boot starting.

Hardware: MSI Z790 Meg ACE mobo, Intel 13700KF CPU, 64GB DDR5-6600, RTX 3080 Ti, ASUS XG-C100C NIC,

thanks
joel

Could you post the exact name of the Mint iso here? Or at least indicate if you got it from the official Mint site? Did you verify the download was not corrupted before writing it to the usb? Did you get any indication that writing it with Rufus was not successful? Do you have access to another computer you can use to test boot the usb to eliminate that as the problem?

Did you try "Start Linux Mint in compatibility mode"

I would create a Ventoy device using a blank USB key, copy the ISO file(s) of interest onto it, and select what I want to boot into form the Ventoy menu. IF I liked it, I would follow the instructions at the Ventoy site for setting up persistence for the one I want to use most often.

Hi, thanks for responding.

The ISO is linuxmint-21.3-cinnamon-64bit.iso

I downloaded it from https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=311 and selected a local Australia mirror (Internode).

There were no indications it did not download successfully. I've not had any download issues for years since being on Fiber Internet.

Rufus appeared to work correctly. There were no errors messages. (I tried the ISO burn mode and the DD burn modes. That latter download 2 extra files).
Neither method works for either GPT or MBR. Or with 16k/32K cluster size with FAT32.

Yes, I have an old X299 10940X system. Exact same symptoms there. Also tried on a different Z790 with a 12600KF CPU.

@colorpurple21859 How do I do that? I press F11 to get into boot menu, select the USB drive with Linux on and press Enter. Persistence? I'd like to install mint on the external SSD so I can have a portable install. Restart, F11, Select the drive with Linux installation and away we go...

@wpeckham I've never heard of Ventoy. Will look it up.

A linux mint boot menu doesn't appear after doing this?

Correct. The screen goes blank for a second then re-displays the boot menu.

I've also tried turning off Secure Boot and also updated my BIOS to the latest stable version. Also, set all BIOS settings to default.

Tried Ventoy as well - same deal

This goal can be achieved as long as you don't install machine dependent proprietary drivers, essentially just do a vanilla installation and you should be good and golden.

So you have tried the flash drive with Mint on more than one machine with negative results. Often this type problem is due to graphics cards but that seems unlikely unless you have the same graphics on both machines. I would do the simple test of verifying the download explained at the Mint site as it is quite simple and eliminates a potential problem. May not be the problem but it is simple to eliminate it as a possibility. You are not likely to get any message about a bad download, it's simple to check.

In your initial post you indicate you used 'diskpart'. Did you create a new partition table? MBR? GPT? Tried both? Is the Sandisk on which you have written the iso new? Has it been used previously? If I understand, you created a new partition table on the device so there is nothing on it and you formatted it to vfat, correct?

Okay, we need a lot more detail. When you booted from the ventoy device did you get the menu or did something go south BEFORE the menu came up?

That CPU has a ton of security options: so you will have to try to turn off any of those that you can that might prevent booting from a criminally proprietary operating system that encourages lockin.

@yancek:
4 Machines now;

1. 13700KF, RTX 3080 Ti, 64GB DDR5, Z790
2. 12600KF, RTX 2080 Ti, 32GB DDR4, Z790
3. 10900X, RTX 2070 Super, 32GB DDR4, X299
4. 10940X, GTX 1660 Ti, 32GB DDR4, X299

The Sandisk Extreme GO SDCZ800 has been used before, hence why I deleted all partitions from it. I've run chkdsk across it.No errors.

The disk was partitioned/formatted by Rufus - by no other means- when "burning" The Mint ISO to the drive. Both MBR and GPT were tried.

With the Sandisk drive created by either Rufus or Ventoy it "goes south" before anything is displayed. The PC displays the boot menu, I select the drive with Mint on it, press Enter and it re-displays the boot menu again.

I will do the "simple test" to verify the download and get back to you. I expect it to be fine.

@wpeckham; I'll go through the options that I can disable and let you know how it goes. I'll start with the oldest hardware first, rather than the latest.

certutil -hashfile;
5aa24abbc616807ab754a6a3b586f24460b0c213b6cacb0bf8b9a80b65013ecc

sha256sum.txt from mint site
5aa24abbc616807ab754a6a3b586f24460b0c213b6cacb0bf8b9a80b65013ecc

The hashes match.

The hashes of the image match, but the usb won't properly boot.
I would suggest recreating (rewriting the image) the usb then try again.

It seem fairly certain that the image was not properly written to the usb for booting.


You said you used rufus to create the usb. Did you copy the iso in dd mode or did you simply write the content of the iso to the usb?
The ISO should be bootable, and normally the usb will boot if the image is written directly to the usb device, exactly as writing the iso to a CD or DVD would be done.

IF it "goes south" before even displaying the Ventoy menu, then it is not even getting to the ISO file for Linux. I think the issue is either hardware related, or one of the security processes shutting down boot from that external media before it gets to display. I could be wrong, but that is what it looks like to me. I will be watching here to see what happens.
You might add some other ISO file or files to that Ventoy device just to see if it ever gives you the menu if THAT ISO file is not the only option, but I suspect that will not help.

Yes, I tried DD mode as well as the (recommended) ISO mode. I tried Rufus and Ventoy.
I will try a different drive.