No matter what I try, I can't seem to get my computer to boot from USB. I would very much appreciate any help. I'm usually quite good at these things but the solution here eludes me. I have been working with 2 separate computers (in case the problem was just with one):
- Desktop: Windows 7 pro x64, AMD Phenom II 945, Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P, supports USB2.0
- Laptop: Windows 7 home x64, Emachines E627 (Athalon 64 TF-20, ? MB, but supports USB2.0
I've got a 16GB USB stick and I've tried this with others as well (in case it was a hardware problem with the USB).
I've tried installing various bootable USB images using various boot USB creator tools.
The tools that I have tried include:
- Xboot
- YUMI
- Universal USB Installer (I can't post more than 2 links)
- and probably a few other I'm forgetting right now.
With those, in turn, I've installed the following list of solutions (in order) on the USB thumb drive:
- A multiboot USB containing a variety of bootable tools such as AV rescue disk, Hiren's BootCD, Trinity Rescue Kit, Kali linux, Ophcrack, etc, etc
- Only Hiren's BootCD
- Only BitDefender's Rescue CD (as this one matches my currently installed av)
In every case (3 solutions * 3 boot usb installers * 2 computers) the computer happily boots into windows as if it doesn't even notice that I'm trying to boot to USB. This is maddening.
Random other little things I've tried include:
- Legacy USB is enabled
- Manually choosing each of: USB-HDD, USB-FDD, USB-CDROM, USB-ZIP from the boot menu
- The only other boot options available are HDD, CD-ROM, LS120, FLOPPY (conspicuously missing is anything about a removable drive)
- Completely disabling HDD from the BIOS boot
- Disabling hardware virtualization in BIOS
- Screwing around with other bios settings..
- syslinux vs grub4dos
- I'll add others as I think of them..
So ya, if anyone can help, that would be amazing. Thanks.
As per the suggestion in the comments, I've also tried plop linux. I followed this step-by-step procedure, however my computer still booted to windows.