USB boot help

Help
1

Hi all,

I’m trying to get my DFI P965S motherboard to boot the latest Haiku nightly from a SanDisk thumbdrive, but no luck. The computer freezes on the BIOS splash screen. It’s already set up to boot from USB, and booted a Linux distro from the same thumbdrive, and also successfully boots an older version of Haiku from a different SanDisk.

Also, this thumbdrive boots up fine on a Dell desktop. Is there a particular file I can copy from the older Sandisk to the newer one that might allow the newer one to boot?

2

Hi!
1/ check which USB port you’re using (USB2, USB3, etc)
2/ enable on-screen debug and see how far the boot process goes.

3

Hi Korli,

Tnx for the reply. I forgot to say that it freezes on the initial BIOS boot screen before getting to the Haiku boot process; I edited the original message to include that.

4

Hmm… this has happened to me before when using a flash drive that wasn’t supported on HP Compaq machines before. Try using a different brand of flash drive, and see if your Dell will accept it then. The best tools I’ve found are dcfldd (or dd) and Win32DiskImager. If you have other USB devices plugged in, remove them. Another possibility is that you don’t have legacy USB enabled in the BIOS. If nothing else, you could burn a CD, boot from it, and point to the USB in Installer when it’s time to install. I hope this helps.

5

I think he said it worked before with Haiku and Linux. Having multiple USB storage devices can make things stop working.

6

I think there’s a misunderstanding… I was telling him to switch to a different flash drive – not plug them in all at once! :smiley: For example, if he has a spare Kingston drive, he could try imaging Haiku to it and try to boot from it instead of the Sandisk. I had mentioned to unplug any extra devices…

… but I realize now I should have added “unplug any flash drives plugged in” instead; sorry if this wasn’t clear. Anyway, I was just offering a fast guess that his computer didn’t like the drive, which is why I was recommending to test a new one… although the image might have also gone corrupt, which he could also look for. From there, he could rewrite it, verify its sums, re-download it, etc. I usually have three different flash drives i carry with me and cycle through for the first reason, though; some boards/systems like one startup disk, others like another one – and I’ve never quite figured that out yet. :wink:

But in any case, I hope he gets Haiku to boot okay!