If your system has Intel® Boot Guard, did you disable it along with secure boot?

I'm working through the list of security features. So far I've tried all combinations of virtualization, VT-D and secure boot.
Will update once I've completed all the combinations.
Note that on the X299 systems I have no "boot guard" BIOS settings that I can find.

Most of these are not in bios of X299 systems

groan... There are so many resources that suggest different ways of creating the USB. For a noob like me, I just followed the various methods as suggested.

What I should have done is referred to the Mint site. It says to use a program called "Etcher".

Sure, enough, it now boots X299 system. I'll now try it on this Z790

Nope, Boot manager doesn't even see the drive on the Z790. I've tried Cinnamon, Mate and XFCE

I've gone through the various BIOS options. No combination I can find will boot on the Z790

SUCCESS!!

It seems Mint v21+ be it Cinnamon, Mate or XFCE just doesn't like my hardware

Mint Cinnamon v20.3 boots fine after using Rufus with GPT to create the drive.

Go to the part where it wants to know where to install. I don't want to run it along side windows, so I selected something else. \dev\sdc looks to the the external drive I want to use, but I panicked and was worried it would break my Windows installation. Time to do some reading.

thanks for your help all.

Joel.

Thought I should share this, which I accidentally came across...

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=396318

It seems the issue with Mint 21+ is a known issue. See second post on the above thread.

It was hoped that the issue would be resolved in 21.2, but appears to be still present even in 21.3, and as the post states "20.3 is the last version that supports secure boot".

Even though I disabled everything I could find related to secure boot in the BIOS, nothing worked for 21+

1 members found this post helpful.

Well, THAT is a pain! Try the MintDE version?

If it "goes south" before the Ventoy menu appears, that means it is not even reaching the Linux ISO file. Either a hardware problem or a security process that stops the boot from that external media before it reaches the display could be the culprit. I could be completely mistaken, but that is how it appears to me. geometry dash lite

That was exactly the thought that prompted me to make comments #10 and #14.

It appears to be a known issue since v21.0. I'm not privy to the in's and out's of Linux, and probably wouldn't understand any of it even if I was.

Despite disabling secure boot, and a bunch of other options, until I went back to 20.3 nothing was successful.

20.3 booted and installed on my X299 system
If I tried to boot the live drive I got garbled colors on the screen and nothing happened. Booting in compatibility mode enabled it to boot up successfully
However, after installing Mint on my SSD and trying to boot, it would not - it did the same thing the live drive did - messed up colors on screen and nothing further.

That same SSD was not even detected on my Z790, with Secure boot enabled or disabled.

I suspect I may find that I just can't create an installed SSD that I can use on multiple machines

Or perhaps you can, but Mint may not be suitable for that specific and unusual purpose.
You can get somewhat the same effect, a portable system the way you like it, by using a VENTOY device with a single ISO copied onto it with the setup for persistence. IT runs live from the USB device, but retains the changes you make (that is the persistent part) as if it were installed. The live boot allows it to properly detect and adjust for changes in hardware as you move from one hardware platform to another.

I have never tested Mint or MintDE for that purpose, so I cannot attest that Mint would work well for that.

You only registered last month, and all of your 10 posts are in this thread, so welcome to LQ if someone else hasn't welcomed you. I suspect you're not a first time user, though.

You should try something like Alien Bob's liveslak live usb system. You can make a live usb which you can take to any system and keep your configuration, and your data. I use them myself. Head over to http://liveslak.org and start reading. You create the disk using the iso2usb.sh script, and choose as many of the extra .sxz files as you want. I use Multilib, and wine myself. Multilib gives 32bit libs on a 64bit system for running 32bit windows programs under wine.

Hi, and thanks for the welcome. The response and the people who made them have been very supportive.


Lol, what makes you say that?

I have quite a bit of Windows experience, but by no means an expert. I literally have no Linux experience to speak of. Other than perhaps a little technical prowess. At times I have trouble getting started, but once pointed in the right direction things start to fall into place.

I have been doing a lot of reading before biting the bullet and giving it a real go.

I will surely give the liveslak and ventoy suggestions a go. I'm going to be absent for a little while as I have some personal matters I must attend to.

If I haven't said it already, many thanks to everyone who has help me out here.

You see to things, & report back with results or issues.