Santa brought me a new laptop

Stephen Warren swarren-tag-list-nclug at wwwdotorg.org
Mon Dec 30 17:52:02 UTC 2024


On 12/27/24 20:44, Bill Thorson wrote:
> On 12/26/24 16:07, spiros thanasoulas wrote:
>> could it be that the image is not EFI based?
>> or maybe in the bios there is a setting to enable non-uefi boot modes?
> Ok, after 30+ years of running Linux on everything and building and 
> running many clusters of Linux computers all over the place, I'm finally 
> stumped with this one,  Here's the thumb drive image of Debian 12 I 
> created by dd'ing the .iso to the drive.
> 
> As seen by the Linux boot menu:
> 
> 
> 
> And Linux when I selected it:
> 
> 
> 
> Now on IdeaPad 5 2-in-1 14Q8X9 and Windoz 11 boot menu:
> 
> 
> Not seen!  Windoz BIOS:

Note that it's Windows, not Windoz; no need for name-calling. And 
Windows is 100% irrelevant to what I believe you want to do.

What does the existing OS have to do with this? IIRC you just wanted to 
boot a different OS from a USB drive. That USB drive is showing up in 
the list of boot devices ("Specific STORAGE" is its name per the 
screenshots on the other laptop) in your screenshot; just select it 
there and you should be set. There's no need to boot Windows or change 
anything in Windows. All this happens in UEFI long before Windows boots.

To confirm: That screenshot where "Specific STORAGE" does show up: Is it 
_really a Windows boot menu as you said, or a UEFI boot menu? I'm pretty 
sure it's a UEFI boot menu, not a Windows boot menu... If it is some 
form of Windows boot menu, that's not the right place to boot the USB 
drive. Instead, interrupt the UEFI boot (often by pressing F9 IIRC) and 
select the option to boot from a specific device.

> No control over UEFI option.  Now when I select the drive in Windoz:
> 
> 
> Then when I cancel formatting the drive:
> 
> 
> Definitely looks like Windoz is not using UEFI and not recognizing the 
> format.

Well, Windows doesn't _use_ UEFI in any case[1]. It's booted _by_ UEFI. 
Your laptop almost certainly does use UEFI if it's new; it's basically 
the only option out there on recent PC HW. But what Windows does or 
doesn't do should be irrelevant here; you want to boot from the USB 
drive without involving Windows at all. Equally, you don't care whether 
Windows can read/access the data on the USB drive since Windows isn't 
involved in booting it, so doesn't need to be able to read it.

[1] Ignoring details such as UEFI runtime services and the ESP partition 
that aren't relevant here.

 >  I've searched everywhere to find out how to fix this. It has > been 
completely frustrating.  No wonder I've stayed away from these
> pathetic operating systems my entire career.
> 
> But, still would appreciate any ideas that might help.
> 
> Bill
> 



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