Cant boot from live USB or CD

[JonathonBates86]

Toshiba Satellite c655d-s5130

Original HDD with fresh install of W7 via DVD. No problems.

Pulled that hard drive and replaced with larger 500gb hard drive to install Mint 13 Cinnamon. Installed fine. Updated 400mb of system updates and rebooted fine. Removed hard drive and mounted it to a Mint 13 Cinnamon desktop with the intentions of copying my home directory. Copied everything in my home directory to new hard drive and crap hit the fan.

Now with the Mint hard drive in the laptop it will not boot. I can enter my username and password in the login screen, press enter, get a black screen with mouse pointer for about 5 seconds and then the keyboard and mouse freeze. I cannot boot into my previous installation.

Thought the problem was with my coppied home folder so my next guess was to re-install and start over. I tried to boot from live DVD and live USB and neither works now. It hangs on boot. I cannot get a Live installation to boot. Both boot fine from my desktop. Also, when I put my original HDD with W7 installed in it boots fine. No problems. I can mount the Mint drive on Mint desktop and browse files no problem.

I thought/think this is a display driver problem so here's what I have done
select compatibility mode on live usb. Press tab to edit boot peramiters. Right before "--" I added "nomodeset" then booted with no change in results. Added "nomodeset acpi=off" and tried to boot with no change in results. Added "acpi=off" and tried to boot with no change in results.

This is so strange. It worked fine this morning during my initial install of mint on the laptop now i cant get anything to boot. Im even trying to boot the live USB without any hard drive installed. Im lost. It was working fine, now its not.

Any help would be greately appreciated
- Jay

[caf4926]

Also, when I put my original HDD with W7 installed in it boots fine

OK

Are you prepared to use Gparted to write a new partition table on this HD?

Then start again
But this time, I suggest you copy what files you want to a backup device and then transfer them.

[JonathonBates86]

I dont mind changing the original W7 HDD...but i cant even get it to boot any Linux live CD/DVD or USB regardless of what hard drive i have in or if i take the hard drives out. It will boot my W7 recovery disk fine...just not linux. Strange as I installed from the same live USB this morning

[caf4926]

I'm struggling to understand exactly which way round everything is

For eg, you say

Now with the Mint hard drive in the laptop it will not boot. I can enter my username and password in the login screen, press enter, get a black screen with mouse pointer for about 5 seconds and then the keyboard and mouse freeze. I cannot boot into my previous installation.

So it does boot? or you wouldn't be entering username and password

[JonathonBates86]

Freshly installed mint 13 cinnamon 64x this morning. No problems. Rebooted a couple times with updates. no problems

Pulled the hard drive and mounted in another computer. Coppied items into the home directory. Put it back into the laptop and now cannot get past the Login Screen. As soon as I enter my username, password it freezes. I thought the installation was corrupt due to me copying something to the home directory on the hard drive so i attempted to start over from the beginning. Now I cannot load the same Live USB installation that I used earlier today to install mint. The USB drive works fine on another computer.

summary:
Hard drive will load grub...load the login screen and freeze as soon as the password is entered.
Live installations will no longer load

[caf4926]

This other computer is a Desktop? And also has Mint install?
If you connect the 500GB HD to it and use Gparted to create a new partition table and re-partition it. Can you boot now.

Though I must say what you are experiencing is very odd

[caf4926]

One thing to watch for
Is when you connect/disconnect HD's to the mainboard it can move around settings in the BIOS

Laptops vary, my G550 uses F12 to access the desired boot device
My eeepc uses Esc

[JonathonBates86]

This other computer is a Desktop? And also has Mint install?
If you connect the 500GB HD to it and use Gparted to create a new partition table and re-partition it. Can you boot now.

Though I must say what you are experiencing is very odd

Other computer is a Desktop running the same version of Mint 13 Cinnamon 64 that I am trying to get running on the laptop.

Nothing linux is booting on this laptop right now. Old Ubuntu CDS, This mint USB and CD. W7 drive will boot fine. If I create a new partition table with Gparted will it remove my installation data on the HDD? If so I will have to install via live media...which I cannot get working...

I have used Linux for years now and hate using W computers...this is the strangest thing I have seen

[caf4926]

If I create a new partition table with Gparted will it remove my installation data on the HDD

Yes, totally.

I don't think Mint will boot live with no HDD, (someone may correct me)
But certainly distros like Puppy Linux will, and IIRC PCLinuxOS has that option too.

So this Laptop has a windows HD too? You say is working? But will it boot live CD's with the windows HD in?

[JonathonBates86]

If I create a new partition table with Gparted will it remove my installation data on the HDD

Yes, totally.

I don't think Mint will boot live with no HDD, (someone may correct me)
But certainly distros like Puppy Linux will, and IIRC PCLinuxOS has that option too.

So this Laptop has a windows HD too? You say is working? But will it boot live CD's with the windows HD in?

Mint will boot without a hard drive mounted. Thats how I did it earlier today.

Just put the W7 drive in and it will not boot a live disk with in. Will boot into the drive directly with no problems though. The laptop came with windows 7 and one hard drive. I am using a second drive I had laying around for linux. On a side note, I just booted into a live Windows repair disk. This problem is linux not playing well with my laptop. but like i said, it worked flawlessly this morning

[caf4926]

Strange...

Shut it down
Pull the battery and leave a few mins

Try again

[Sashman]

Believe, this might be the same problem as outlined and discussed here: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=117648.
Sadly, not solved yet.

[JonathonBates86]

It has something to do with the laptop itself and certain versions of linux. I stayed up till 3am trying to boot. Removed the battery, hard drive, and power cord over night. Booted from the live usb this morning without the HDD installed. Once running I was only able to mount the HDD via a USB adapter to the second usb port. Installed it on the hard drive, shut down, installed the hard drive in the laptop, and it booted fine. Several reboots since then and no problems. I have no clue what was going on but removing everything and letting it sit solved it. FYI, I also got a "internal battery reset" notification on initial boot his morning. I removed the "watch" battery inside several times yesterday and it did not solve it then. I guess letting it chill out solved it....strange :\
Please mark solved

[ringo32]

with a live usb u dont really use your hdd, hdd is not needit exactly.. with Unetbootin you can reservate some usb space for your distro....
with unetbootin is the ubuntu option, and mint 14 is based on ubuntu...

question it, did you made your live usb wel? when made wrong it doesnt booot the system..