Hello.
I try to boot a bootable USB with Ubuntu 22.04.2 (desktop version) in live session but I can't.

The computer is Asus i7 laptop rather old (CPU 37xx), with 6 GiB RAM, running windows 8. Lately I had problems with the o.s., nevertheless it could "auto repair" them. About 10 days ago this "auto repair" doesn't work, and the laptop enters in a cycle of "diagnosing" the problem, trying repair, failing to repair and asking for further solutions. I try to boot into Ubuntu to backup data (still possible from the windows command line that still works), and working on the laptop until I repair the system or replace it with newer windows or any Linux.

I made a bootable USB stick from Ubuntu 22.04.2 from the official Ubuntu site (checksum verified) with Rufus (the ISO is too big for DVD). When booting from the USB I get the Grub page, select the first option (try live or install) and press enter. I get the next black screen (I don't remember the exact title in the upper line) and then there is nothing hopping for several minutes. I can just press the power button to power down the laptop and retry.

I use the ESC key to select the boot device. I tried with the Secure boot enabled or disabled (no change).
Suspecting that I need to add any boot parameters in the grub command, I tried 'boot=live' that I found as suggestion in the Ubuntu site's support pages. It didn't change anything (nothing better with 'acpi=off' or 'noapic' that did help in the past with other computers). No chance with other options from the grub list (eg safe graphics).

So, I ask if you can help with any idea on the right parameter(s) to use, or perhaps another Ubuntu version.

I'm able to boot with no problem at all from the GParted LiveCD (secure boot disabled), with network setup OK and internet access, so I'm rather sure that there is no hardware problem with the laptop.

This would indicate the system isn't locking up. Maybe adding video=1024x768 or something similar as a kernel parameter will help.

1 members found this post helpful.

So why don't you uae that to do your backup ?.You're just guessing. Symptoms probably indicate a disk problem - you should be able to do smartmon full tests from the gparted livecd.

1 members found this post helpful.

In fact, I'm using gparted livecd now to connect to the forum. It works, I can use the web browser, and I'm looking how to find the partition content. Not very simple.

The first thing after booting GParted LiveCD was to run the command 'sudo smartctl -a'. It didn't find any problem. Of course, I have to check the RAM too. The wireless network port has been broken just before the O.S. problem became serious, however this is probably part of the software problem, not a hardware problem. I'm not sure can check this with GParted Live.

I'll try this kind of parameters too. It's fanny that I had to use always such parameters with GParted or Knoppix cds on my desktop computers since the Pentium era, but it was easier to boot Ubuntu versions of the time. Now GParted goes perfect with default selections, and it's Ubuntu that causes problems.

Another thing would be the EFI setting concerning the Compatibility layer. It is set to "Disabled" for windows 8. I think it makes the system compatible to the MBR model instead of UEFI. However I think that most distributions now are compatible with the EFI model.

Newer info: I found in the web various posts that describe my problem: after the selection of "Try or install Ubuntu" a black screen comes with the title "Booting a command list" on top, and an underscore a couple of lines lower. In some cases this happened to Acer aspire laptops (mine is Asus X75V).

In a french support forum for ubuntu (forum.ubuntu-fr.org) I found the suggestion of removing 'quiet splash ---' from the command, adding 'acpi=off noapic debug ignore_loglevel radeon.dpm=0' that didn't solve the problem, and finally adding a new line with 'insmod progress' that solved the problem in that case.

However it didn't work in my case: those commands / parameters in fact allow to display the various messages on screen. I see firstly 'vmlinuz', after that 'initrd' that comes to 100% loaded, and that's all. It freezes in no more than 30 seconds (thanks to the USB3 speed). So, what's that stops the boot process at that point?

maybe rootdelay=20 will help

1 members found this post helpful.

Maybe got unlucky with the ubuntu download and ended up with corrupted iso since gparted boots OK.

Was a checksum done of iso done before making the ubuntu live usb.

Edit: I mention this because it took me 3 tries to get a good MX Budgie iso from sourceforge.

Thanks for the idea. I'll try it


Yes, I checked it after download and found it good. I checked the "Verify" function in Rufus too, without error.

No chance with rootdelay. I tried values from 20 to 300 seconds.
Next attempt was with Ubuntu 14.4.6 that is still in extended maintenance (v.14 would be closer to the computer's hardware). Same problem. It seems that there is something with the Ubuntu initialization settings in relation to my hardware or UEFI/BIOS settings.

Anyway I has been able to boot up MX as well as antiX (I now write from the antiX web browser). So I go further with them for now, and leave the Ubuntu problem for later. Hopefully the Linux garden offers many fruits!

Thank you all for your ideas and your time.