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?

TIA for any tips.

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':Please do let 'us' know what the resolution is!

Make a Plop cd to boot live Debian from usb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N51B0gi-g0U

A few issues.

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.

Are you turning windows all of the way off? Not just windows hybrid sleep/off mode.

Hold down the shift button while you are selecting poweroff.

I think that is the button.

Don't know. I stay away from Windows as much as humanly possible.
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.)

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.

The "Fast Startup" crap arrived with Windows 8.


How old is it - maybe 32-bit vs 64-bit ?

Check what the machine is, and what ISO you used?

rnturn,

The OP on this thread took extreme measures and reset the CMOS battery which then allowed him to boot the laptop:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...e-l650-924982/

Please note that he accidentally damaged the DVD player but he was still able to boot from a USB drive.

Also check the date and time in BIOS, which could indicate a CMOS battery problem.

This video may help you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fG9x8WitXE

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"?