Can't boot from USB flash drive

[HalationEffect]

Not really Kubuntu related, but I couldn't find a more appropriate sub-forum for this problem I'm having:

Goal - to update my motherboard's firmware to support 22nm Ivy Bridge CPUs, as I've almost saved up enough to afford a Core i3 3225. The mobo is a Gigabyte GA-H61M-S2PV rev 2.0, and Gigabyte's website states that it will support Ivy Bridge CPUs with firmware version FD or later. My board has firmware version FC.

What I've done so far - used unetbootin to make my 8GB flash drive (brand new, delivered today, already formatted as FAT32) into a bootable FreeDOS drive, and then also copied over the flash utility & firmware update data file onto the flash drive.

The problem - when booting my PC, the firmware splash screen tells me I can press F12 to access the boot menu... however, when I boot the machine with the flash drive already plugged into a USB port, pressing F12 does *nothing*. The PC just blithely proceeds to boot from my SSD, and next thing I know, I'm staring at my Kubuntu desktop.

If I can't get this to work, is there any way of making a bootable .iso image comprised of FreeDOS + mobo firmware flashing utility + firmware data file, which I could then burn to a CD? I know my machine will boot from the optical drive.

I'm kinda stumped at this point...

[oshunluvr]

Do you have grub installed on your SSD?

If so, you can boot to a thumb drive thusly:

menuentry '[COLOR=#417394]Boot[/COLOR] to [COLOR=#417394]USB[/COLOR]' {
set root='hd1,msdos1'
chainloader +1
}

Either enter this into your 40_custom file under /etc/grub.d and run update-grub or manually add it at the grub prompt for a one-time boot. The manually one-time entry looks like:

set root='hd1,msdos1'
chainloader +1

My mobo is older and won't allow booting to a USB drive without a manual entry in BIOS. The above stanza allows me to select and boot to a thumb drive without envoking BIOS first.

[james147]

I know some Gigabyte motherboard bioses allow you to update them from within the bios (normally using a fat32 formatted usb with the update image on, I know mine does this). Does yours support this?

[HalationEffect]

Do you have grub installed on your SSD?

If so, you can boot to a thumb drive thusly:

menuentry '[COLOR=#417394]Boot[/COLOR] to [COLOR=#417394]USB[/COLOR]' {
set root='hd1,msdos1'
chainloader +1
}

Either enter this into your 40_custom file under /etc/grub.d and run update-grub or manually add it at the grub prompt for a one-time boot. The manually one-time entry looks like:

set root='hd1,msdos1'
chainloader +1

My mobo is older and won't allow booting to a USB drive without a manual entry in BIOS. The above stanza allows me to select and boot to a thumb drive without envoking BIOS first.

Thanks for that tip; if I can't get the system to boot from the USB drive in a regular fashion, I'll give that a go. This is my first experience using unetbootin, so I'm not entirely sure that I've correctly made the USB stick bootable, I'm going to look into that aspect first. I might try using a friend's Windows machine to reformat the stick, make it bootable, and copy the firmware update utility and data files onto it.

I'm a bit leery of editing grub, never having really messed with grub before. I'm a bit on the ultra-cautious side, as I only have the one PC, and if I bork it I'll be up the creek without a paddle.

I know some Gigabyte motherboard bioses allow you to update them from within the bios (normally using a fat32 formatted usb with the update image on, I know mine does this). Does yours support this?

Alas, Gigabyte's baked-into-the-firmware Q-Flash utility was the first method I tried... but unfortunately the recent firmware updates (versions FD and later) for my mobo require a newer version of Q-Flash than is built into my motherboard's firmware... so in order to update my firmware using Q-Flash, I'd first have to update my firmware... talk about a Catch-22!

[oshunluvr]

Well, it might be time to role up your sleeves and break that install!

Kidding, of course...

It's unlikely to the Nth degree that editing 40_custom will break grub and even less likely that a manual grub entry at boot time will cause any permanent effect of any kind, positive or negative. Besides, don't you know that breaking our installs is the fastest way to learn new things about linux? Call it a "Crash" course!

Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun

[james147]

I'm a bit leery of editing grub, never having really messed with grub before. I'm a bit on the ultra-cautious side, as I only have the one PC, and if I bork it I'll be up the creek without a paddle.

Then I would make sure you have plenty of live cd lying around just in case You can never have too many live cd

[SteveRiley]

I'm not entirely sure that I've correctly made the USB stick bootable

Assuming that your USB drive, when inserted, becomes /dev/sdb, what's the output of

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb

[HalationEffect]

Assuming that your USB drive, when inserted, becomes /dev/sdb, what's the output of

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdd: 8019 MB, 8019509248 bytes
102 heads, 38 sectors/track, 4041 cylinders, total 15663104 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x04030201

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1   *        2264    15663103     7830420    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Hmm, that asterisk is suggesting to me that the partition should be bootable.

[oshunluvr]

That asterisk doesn't mean very much. It tells an MS-DOS/Windows boot loader that the partition is to be considered Drive "C:" and thus might be bootable.

Grub doesn't care about that at all. Grub only cares if you have a bootable filesystem on a partition you point it at.

[Snowhog]

when booting my PC, the firmware splash screen tells me I can press F12 to access the boot menu... however, when I boot the machine with the flash drive already plugged into a USB port, pressing F12 does *nothing*.

With the PC powered off, and the flash drive plugged in, power on the PC and immediately start pushing the F12 key repeatedly until the BIOS setup screen appears. It is possible that you are pressing the F12 key 'to late' into the boot process. ("Approximately 0.63 seconds. For an android, that is almost an eternity." - Data & Capt. Picard, STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT)

[HalationEffect]

It is possible that you are pressing the F12 key 'to late' into the boot process.

I really should have thought of that myself! I'd been waiting until I saw the BIOS splash screen before pressing F12.

As I've got my son staying with me today, I'll give it a try tomorrow & report on whether or not it worked.

[Guest]

Yeah the live optical disks work fine if the thumb drives are not working anymore. Also check if sector 0 of the boot drive is written with the master boot record. Sometimes even after everything seems right it does not work. Try your luck. www.ranker.com

[HalationEffect]

Ooops, I totally forgot to come back to this thread.

Snowhog was right - spamming the F12 key during the boot process (beginning pressing it before I even see the BIOS splash screen) did indeed get me to the boot menu.