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#1 2009-08-19 13:24:24

lolilolicon
Member
Registered: 2009-03-05
Posts: 1,722

Can't boot from USB installation image

Hello folks, I've just wiped my old Arch from my laptop and now it's unhappy that I'm using Windows. It wants Arch back so much I can't reject.

So I just resized my hard disk to make 20GB of Free Space, preparing to install Arch again. Then I rebooted the machine.

Oops, grub gave error 22. I thought it was odd since I was booting from removable device, i.e. use drive. Anyway, I did use the Window Xp installation CD to recover the MBR with fixmbr command. Then I was able to boot into Windows, which is my only OS for now sad

But I cannot boot from the USB image.
I am able to boot from ArchLinux LiveCD 2008.08, and I did again the dd stuff to make sure I did it right. Here's the command I used:

# mount /dev/sdc2 /mnt
# cd /mnt/Arch_Install
# dd bs=8M if=archlinux-2009.08-core-i686.img of=/dev/sdb

the arch 2009.08. image was on /dev/sdc2 and the usb drive was /dev/sdb

I then rebooted again, selected boot device to removable device in BIOS, saved and quit. Reboot and wait... Oops, Windows. roll

I remember booting from USB drive successfully a while ago with Arch installed on it. So my machine should be able to boot from USB drive (unless the BIOS update should have disabled this feature, which is unlikely.)

Some more info about /dev/sdb (the USB drive):

# fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
      phys=(0,1,1)      logical=(0,1,3)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
      phys=(46,94,61)      logical=(128,52,41)

The non-Linux thing looks odd to me.

# cfdisk /dev/sdb
                   Pri/Log      Free Space                     0.04 MB
sdb1   Boot   Primary    [ARCHISO_OINGAE2I]     _size_i_dont_remember_
                   Pri/Log      Free Space                     _size_i_dont_remember_

The free space before sdb1 looks a little strange to me.

I just want my arch back... my laptop, at a loss without it

Last edited by lolilolicon (2009-08-19 13:56:40)


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#2 2009-08-19 23:08:36

djszapi
Member
From: Cambridge, United Kingdom
Registered: 2009-06-14
Posts: 1,439
Website

Re: Can't boot from USB installation image

Hello lolilolicon!

"I then rebooted again, selected boot device to removable device in BIOS," I don't know how yololiloliconu tried it exactly, inside the bios settings interface or with other function keys, but here with f12, and then choosing the boot media, it works.

Can you reproduce the working situation now too, e.g. with other image files ?

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#3 2009-08-20 08:12:39

lolilolicon
Member
Registered: 2009-03-05
Posts: 1,722

Re: Can't boot from USB installation image

Thanks for answering, djszapi.
I've done the installation with a Installation CD. 
Have no idea what was wrong still though. With my machine it's F2 into BIOS, and I selected boot media there. F10 save and exit. No problem at this step.

Well... it's just odd. Is the output same as mine if you do fdisk on your pen-drive?

Probably a stupid enough decision that I installed gnome! It tries to manage everything... = =!  Not used to it yet.


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