I downloaded the R1beta2 anyboot iso and created an anyboot usb stick, using the terminal. I tried both gcc2 and 64-bit Haiku. I am trying to install it onto my Lenovo A6 laptop, which is currently running an older nightly revision, which works well. The bootloader does not recognize the usb stick. I try rescanning for bootable volumes. It does not find any. I can’t get to the bios to tell it to boot from usb. The bootloader seems to bypass the bios F2 key. If I boot into the existing version, I can mount the usb stick. It looks OK. How to get the bootloader to recognize the usb stick? And how to get to the bios?
I don’t think the bootloader can bypass the BIOS? How would it do that?
If you can boot from the existing version but not when the USB is connected, I would guess that you did, in fact, boot from USB. It’s just that the new bootloader there is confused and does not find your partitions. If that’s the case, I would guess it’s because it’s booting in EFI mode and you’ve hit a case where our EFI bootloader doesn’t work right. And booting in legacy BIOS mode would then likely fix the issue?
In any case, yes, you probably have to somehow find a way to the BIOS setup. Are you sure F2 is the correct key? Did you press it at the right time? (possibly even before the screen turns on or something)?
Dear Kan,
You might try making a short cell phone video of the startup sequence, in case something is flashing by quickly like what key to press for boot menu or BIOS. You can do this both with and without the USB stick connected for comparison.
Lenovo is famous for having a special key sequence like turn off, hold down this button while you turn it on, wait for this to flash then release whatever button, that sort of thing, just to get into BIOS. I’ve been through this. Yours will be more difficult to Google because there’s a phone by the same name; you may need to include “notebook” or “laptop” in your searches.
Finally in case you have one of those computers that simply won’t boot from USB, I can’t remember the name of it but there’s a freeware product that allows you to burn a startup DVD which will then go on to boot a USB stick. That’s if you have an optical drive in the notebook.
Hang in, …Monty.
Thank you for your replies. Previously I could get to the laptop’s bios by holding fn-F2 at startup. Now that doesn’t work. It goes straight to the bootloader, which will not recognize the usb stick. However, I booted my desktop from the usb stick, and tried to upgrade from R1beta1 to R1beta2, and the installer said it is only for new installations. That there is another path for upgrading. So I tried the other path from the terminal. It downloaded many packages, it took hours, as I have a slow internet connection. After rebooting, it was still R1beta1. It turns out that in system/packages/ there is a folder “administrative” containing folders “transaction-1” and “writable-files”. Apparently all the new parts of R1beta2 are there. So how to continue the upgrade to R1beta2?