Arch Linux

Humble_Panda

Member

Registered: 2013-04-30

Posts: 32

[Solved] Unable to boot from USB

Hi all,

So, I got an old Dell Latitude d430 that was long-forgotten in my parent's house. For some reason, I cannot boot from a USB key although, in the BIOS, all the options to do so are enabled (and yet the laptop does not recognise any USB). Now, this may not seem as an Arch issue, but after a long, good hour of reading on the Inet, I found that a guy could solve this buy "formatting the USB key to plain DOS" (something completely new to me). And I wonder, how could I do this from my other box which runs Arch Linux? I mean, how could I format, using Arch Linux, my USB key to plain DOS and then make it bootable with an arch.iso?

Thanks a lot

ps:

sudo dd if=/path/to/iso of=/dev/sdX

does not work.

Last edited by Humble_Panda (2015-04-12 17:58:22)

Inxsible

Forum Fellow

From: Chicago

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,183

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot from USB

Why not ? Any errors ?

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Humble_Panda

Member

Registered: 2013-04-30

Posts: 32

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot from USB

Why not ? Any errors ?

Oh, I meant "dd" works regarding making a bootable USB (which works in my other two boxes), bot it does not create a bootable USB recognisable by DELL's BIOS. Tried different tools to make bootable USB drives, but none is detected by DELL. So, it comes down to booting DOS as I read somewhere else, but I do not know how to do this exactly in Arch Linux.

Best,

Humble_Panda

Member

Registered: 2013-04-30

Posts: 32

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot from USB

Well, problem solved. Unetbootin did not work either, so at the end I tried once again with "dd" but on a different USB drive. The third USB stick I tried finally worked.