My wife's computer, a HP Pavilion G6 laptop is still running Mint 15 and I need to update to 17 so I can install updates.

I already had an .iso of Mint 17 so I made a bootable USB from it and put it in my wife's computer but it would not boot from it. I have tried both going to the startup menu and selecting boot options menu and editing the BIOS to make the boot from USB first option in the boot order and neither has worked. The computer looks at the usb stick - you can see the light flash - but then ignores it and simply mounts it as an external drive when booting the installed version.

I then went out and bought some blank DVDs and burnt the .iso on to it. I tested it im my own computer (also a HP - a G72) and it worked fine so the bootable disk is OK.

I tried it in my wife's computer and the computer would not boot from the CD/DVD ROM drive. I changed the boot order in the BIOS, no go. I tried pressing (Esc) and using the boot menu but that did not even show the CD/DVD ROM drive so no go there.

I'm getting frustrated as I cannot think what to try next.

I put the request on another forum and there were some suggestions there but they all depend on a bootable CD and if it won't boot from DVD I can't see it booting from CD either.

Just some thoughts:

Can you boot a CD with Mint 15 or Knoppix or something else in the G6?
Do you have UEFI or legacy boot on the G6?

Not showing the CD-ROM in the boot menu makes me think it's a UEFI vs legacy issue.

On almost every computer, you DON'T boot to a usb. You move the hard drive choice up from internal to usb hard drive in hard drive order. You boot to a hard drive choice.

You can't assume a dvd is always based on different system. Can try reburn at slowest speed possible and test again. As always test md5 or shal.

You can test a factory dvd like windows to see if the system will boot. Can test with factory cd also like xp to help prove this reader.

To be sure we'd need specs on laptop.

In some cases you might be able to use a modern usb cd/dvd drive to get it to boot. That would be a usb choice.

Can you access cd/dvd discs from Mint 15?

Why are you not updating/upgrading?
Mint is based on either Debian or its derivative Ubuntu, both of which can be updated/upgraded from the commandline, (if not from a menu option).
(man apt-get)

Thanks for your replies. The bios is UEFI

First of all, I had gone into the bios and changed the boot order. Also when you press (Esc) you get an option of drives to boot from. Both of those had failed - there was no mention of the removeable drives in the menu.

I finally sorted the problem. In the bios, although secure boot had been disabled, legacy boot was also disabled. Mint 15 had been booting fine with those settings. I enabled legacy boot and moved the DVD drive to the top and saved. It still didn't automatically boot from DVD but pressing (Esc) and using the boot menu, I was able to boot from the DVD and now have a clean install of Mint 17.1 and have copied over the important settings from the backup disk. Hopefully all running fine.

Until recently, Mint have advised against it, with good reason, IMO and I only became aware yesterday that they now have an upgrade option in the update manager. I've been running Linux for 10 years now and was previously using Ubuntu until they introduced that new desktop which I did not like. I used to use upgrade with Ubuntu but until recently with Mint you had to upgrade by doing clean installs. Not a major problem as long as you have everything backed up. In fact it's not really any more trouble than using upgrade as you should backup anyway in case anything goes wrong.

I was on the point of upgrading using Apt - not something I'd tried before so I thought I would have one more try. Fortunately, it worked.

I was keen to get a LTS version on my wife's computer as she does not make heavy demands, basically using the browser, office and playing a few card games and mahjongg so an LTS version is ideal.

I'll mark the thread solved when I find out how.

OK,