Arch Linux Live CD fails to boot on startup

clarryan · 2014-08-27 16:02:10

Hi I'm a newbie here, and I'm only posting because I've scoured the internet, forums, and arch wiki, and have found nothing to solve my problem.

I'm trying to install Arch on a PC I've heavily upgraded. The basis of the PC is a fairly old (my family got it used in 2007) HP desktop that ran Windows Vista 32-bit for a couple years before I installed Linux on it. I managed to set up a dual-boot running Linux Mint 32-bit, but have now upgraded the motherboard, and CPU to a Asus H81M motherboard and Intel core i3-4220. I've kept the old hard drive and CD/DVD drive (for now), and my dual boot of Vista and Mint both work fine.

However, when I burned the Arch .iso to a DVD and loaded it into my PC, I was unable to boot up Arch. I can manually select to boot from the DVD drive in the boot menu, and my computer hums for all of half a second and sends me to the GRUB boot menu I have from my dual-boot configuration. I thought this might be an issue with my DVD drive and so set up a live USB, and had the same issue. I'm able to select to boot from the USB, but it brings me straight to GRUB without any option of booting up Arch. Thinking I could try preventing the hard drive from booting the system, I temporarily unplugged it and tried booting the live CD again. I was brought straight to the system's boot menu, selected the DVD drive, got a blank screen for half a second, and was then brought back to the system's boot menu. I tried the same thing with the live USB, and had the same problem.

This would have completely perplexed me, if it were not that I had the same issue trying to install Linux Mint x86-64 on my computer about a year ago, that it failed to recognize the live CD (and booted straight to Windows). However, when I burned myself a copy of 32-bit Mint, I had no problem booting from the live CD and installing Mint on my PC. My guess is that the two problems are related, and it seemed like the only link was the difference between the 32-bit Vista and Mint, and the 64-bit Mint and Arch. That said, both the current and previous build of the PC use x86-64 processors, so I don't see why it would be an issue.

Am I going crazy? Is there something obvious I'm missing? Help would be very much appreciated.

Soukyuu · 2014-08-27 17:02:52

Does any other live USB/DVD boot with the current build?
There might be an IDE timeout setting defined in BIOS which is too low for your old DVD drive to finish initializing/spinning up.
As for the USB issue, some BIOS have a "legacy USB" setting which has to be turned on to be able to boot from USB.

clarryan · 2014-08-27 18:31:14

The Linux Mint 64-bit Live CD which I used and failed to work on the old build does not work, but the Linux Mint 32-bit Live CD does boot from DVD successfully. I have the timeout turned to the highest setting, and the Linux Mint DVDs are both far larger than the Arch DVD anyways.

There was a setting on USB device boot which I changed from "Auto" to "Enabled", and it still failed to boot. I choose the USB in the boot options, and it goes straight to booting off my hard drive.

I'm trying to figure out where the problem could be. If I'm having the same problems as my old machine, I would assume that it's an issue with the DVD drive, because all I've kept from the old machine is the case, DVD drive, hard drive, and power supply. But the fact that the live USB also does not work has me totally lost.

Soukyuu · 2014-08-27 20:36:53

On some systems the USB-stick is identified as a HDD, not an USB-HDD. Check if your USB stick is listed under the HDD boot entry.

To me it seems like the BIOS doesn't want to boot any 64-bit system, but that would be the first time I hear about such a limitation. I know the arch iso can't boot on early versions of UEFI for some reason (have to use the 32-bit loader instead of the 64-bit one afair). But in that case you at least get to the live system boot menu and booting the arch CD cancels with an error. So I don't think this is the case here.

clarryan · 2014-08-27 21:27:02

It is definitely able to recognize the USB and DVDs as separate drives; it gives the option of booting from USB, and it gives the memory capacity of the USB drive I used as a live USB, and the memory used for the live CD. But when it comes time to actually boot, something is going wrong.

I would suspect it is a problem with the BIOS, if not for the fact that I had a similar issue on my previous system, which used a completely different motherboard. If it is the same issue, it would either have to be a problem with the DVD drive (although I don't know why it would be against loading some live CDs but not others) or perhaps the way I created the live CDs. Although, again, I don't understand why the Linux Mint 32-bit DVD would work fine, while both 64-bit DVDs would not.

I will try using a different DVD drive to boot the DVDs, and if that does not work, I'll try creating a new Arch live CD to see if I can resolve the issue. But if anyone has any ideas, it would still be greatly appreciated.

2ManyDogs · 2014-08-27 23:36:33

What tool(s) are you using to write the iso to the DVD and USB stick? Please pardon me if you already mentioned this and I missed it.

clarryan · 2014-08-28 21:38:32

I managed to get it working, I think there was an error in the file I downloaded. I re-downloaded it, and it's working fine now (doesn't explain the Linux Mint 64-bit issue, but I'm satisfied.)

Thanks for all the help!

jasonwryan · 2014-08-28 22:08:06

Please remember to mark your thread as [Solved] by editing your first post and prepending it to the title.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-08-27 16:02:10

Arch Linux Live CD fails to boot on startup

#2 2014-08-27 17:02:52

Re: Arch Linux Live CD fails to boot on startup

#3 2014-08-27 18:31:14

Re: Arch Linux Live CD fails to boot on startup

#4 2014-08-27 20:36:53

Re: Arch Linux Live CD fails to boot on startup

#5 2014-08-27 21:27:02

Re: Arch Linux Live CD fails to boot on startup

#6 2014-08-27 23:36:33

Re: Arch Linux Live CD fails to boot on startup

#7 2014-08-28 21:38:32

Re: Arch Linux Live CD fails to boot on startup

#8 2014-08-28 22:08:06

Re: Arch Linux Live CD fails to boot on startup

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