How to boot from USB on my Asus T101HA

Question

I have a Asus Transformer Book T101HA and I am trying to boot a bootable USB stick to dual boot a 2nd operating system (it is currently running Windows 10 as it was out of the box).

When I press ESC on start up to load the boot menu, I only get the following regardless of whether a bootable USB is plugged in or not.

I have also looked in the BIOS to look at the boot order but the options look very limited compared to others ive seen in the past. There is only on boot option and it can only be set to 'Windows Boot Manager' or 'Disabled' (there is no option for USB). There doesn't appear to be any ability to add new boot options.

Can anybody help me out with a way forward to booting from a USB?

Answer 1

Asus T100 is Intel Bay Trail device and most of those, despite having a 64bit CPU, have IA32 (32bit) EFI firmware. Also feature called Secure Boot is enabled in EFI setup by default and that might block some operating systems from showing up in boot menu. In order to make firmware recognize flash-drive as bootable it needs to be formatted as FAT32 and have signed 32bit operating system loader in EFI/bootia32.efi.

You do not mention which 2nd operating system you are trying to boot so I can only assume it's a Linux distribution. It probably does not show up in menu because:

• SecureBoot is enabled and EFI/bootia32.efi is not signed by valid key - easiest is to disable SecureBoot in EFI setup (there should be a toggle). Beware that some Windows 10 features (e.g. BitLocker) don't work in that state.

• 32bit EFI loader is not present on flash-drive at all (this applies for most 64bit Linux distribution Live USBs - e.g. Ubuntu). In that case you will need to compile GRUB for 32bit EFI and place it to proper directory (and also disable SecureBoot, obviously). For Ubuntu, there are ISOs already prepared. You can find them here: http://linuxiumcomau.blogspot.com/2016/10/running-ubuntu-on-intel-bay-trail-and.html (NOTE: those are not official Ubuntu images, have patched kernel to support specific hardware and are not officially supported in any way - please read the information on that page before trying them out.)

This page might give you some hints on getting Linux running on your device (if Linux is case): http://www.jfwhome.com/2014/03/07/perfect-ubuntu-or-other-linux-on-the-asus-transformer-book-t100/

Answer 2

I've installed Linux (Debian) in a T102H, your problem is related to UEFI in this kind of devices.

Before this I:

• Formated the pendrive
• deleted all partitions
• Mounted the pendrive as /mnt/debian
• Downloaded a debian iso

This is simple to solve just "unzipping" the iso into the pendrive:

 7z x debian.iso -o/mnt/debian

And you need to flag the partition as bootable:

parted /dev/sdX set 1 boot on

I've followed those steps and worked like a charm, check out the original answer.

Also I've wrote an article in my blog about the install and configuration process of an Asus T101HA

Answer 3

In my case (2 in 1 Asus 101TA with Windows 10),

• I downloaded Rufus,
• Downloaded a Ubuntu .iso file, LTS 22.04
• With Rufus, I installed that .iso in a 64GB USB drive (I could not make an external hard drive to be recognized by Rufus) and marked GPT and UEFI options, as the answer by Antonio Alazka Mountain suggested. (Apparently, in these laptops the "BIOS" use a different standard, called UEFI, of 32 bits, that do not recognize the .iso unless you burn it in the USB drive with these special settings).
• Then I went to Windows Start → Change advanced start up options → Use a device → Reboot from a USB device, according to this page.

And with all this, my laptop was rebooted from the USB drive, offering Try or Install Ubuntu as one of the options, and recognizing keboard, touch screen, mouse, etc.

Answer 4

I had this issue on asus t100taf, well i'v fixed, Creating a boot usb throw rufus, only its necesary select the option that appears like GPT partition booting EUFI.

After finish the usb memory preparation, the laptop recognice the usb. So i formated the lap.

I hope that my experince its helpful for you.

Answer 5

For Linux, use Rufus to create a boot disk, and then copy the files you want from the Linux ISO to the boot disk.

For Windows, download the Microsoft Media Creation Tool and let it install onto an 8GB flash drive (you need 8GB, 4GB won't work anymore).

Once done, boot the tablet up tapping the escape key. Your thumb drive will show up in the boot menu without screwing around with secureboot settings. Note that Rufus will also create a secureboot compatible flashdrive if you need it.