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Can't boot from USB Drive

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12 replies

by dpalsen 1 view

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Got an interesting one here for you folks...

I have an ECS K7S5A motherboard with an AMD CPU that won't boot from a USB Hard Drive.

1) The motherboard does support boot from USB hard drive, and I'm using the latest BIOS.
2) The Hard Drive uses an EXTERNAL power supply, so it's not a matter of having sufficient power.

I installed both XP and Linux to the drive (a Western Digital 20 GB in an external enclosure), and it boots on another PC just fine, though with a different motherboard in it.

Any ideas?

12 replies

by nexs

what other differences are there between the computer it boots off and the one it doesn't boot off?

by Member 30313058

Some times just resetting all the BIOS options to default also helps to boot the usb up. We've had many occassions where we have set all the correct options but couldnt boot via usb until the options were reset.

I would however recommend first going through all the BIOS settings slowly and finding out where the fault is.

by dpalsen

They're two entirely different PC's. The one it won't boot on is an older scratch-built, and the one it will boot is an HP I bought last year.

by seanferd

You need to ensure that the external USB device is listed before the HDD or any other boot device which has bootable media in it.

by balge

hi
pretty sure that mobo doesnt support booting off USB, what makes you think it does?
cheers

(rubbish board anyway even after flashing it)

by dpalsen

BIOS shows that it will support boot from USB.

by seanferd

"I installed both XP and Linux to the drive (a Western Digital 20 GB in an external enclosure), and it boots on another PC just fine, though with a different motherboard in it."

Are you saying that you installed the operating systems when this drive was attached to the other machine? If so, of course it won't boot the computer you have it attached to now. You need to install an OS on the machine you are going to use it on.

Reinstall the OS with the drive attached to the ECS K7S5A.

by dpalsen

I'm not by a long shot saying this won't work, but what difference would it make? If the bootloader is installed on the drive, and I have the BIOS set to boot from that drive, why would it matter if the OS was installed on that PC? Shouldn't it boot regardless of what PC it was installed on, rather than giving me a boot failure?

by seanferd

Drivers and what are rather specific. This is why an OS is installed, not just copied.

And if the Windows OS is an OEM copy (came with the computer, rather than bought retail off the shelf), it won't install on any other computer.

by dpalsen

It won't matter WHAT hardware is configured in this case, since the OS won't boot to begin with. If I could get into ANY OS, I'd be thrilled at this point, and then I'll configure the hardware. In fact, I'll probably completely reinstall the OS once I can get it to boot. I'm just trying to get the drive to boot at this point. Then I'll worry about how an OS is configured.

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