Toshiba Satellite A-100 - USB live installer ignored

[M_Mynaardt]

Hi!

I wanted to try a live install of Linux Mint 18.2 Xfce on an old warhorse of a laptop.
It's a Toshiba Satellite A100. It is old, and a 32 bit machine.
But made to last. Living by "waste not want not", I wanted to see how it does running Lubuntu on it.

I got to the BIOS to switch the boot order. Which was easy enough.
That's when things started looking a bit odd.

Instead of showing something like "Kingston Data Traveller" for my USB stick, all I saw was "USB Memory".
So, I put that at the top of the boot order.
Then the USB stick was ignored and it went straight to booting up off the old OS (Peppermint 7) off the driver.

I also tried live installs from USB sticks with both antiX 16.1 and Lubuntu 17.04.
Same result each time; the USB stick is ignored for the lot.

I'm not sure if the hard drive in this Toshiba is relevant or not.
The hard drive is a Kingston 120 GB solid state drive.
I popped that in because the old HDD was failing.

Can anyone tell me if this might be a hardware issue specific to this older 32 bit computer having an SSD?
Or maybe if it's a GRUB issue?

Thanks in advance!

[michael louwe]

@ Mynaaardt

How did you install Peppermint 7.? Also with a USB-stick.? Maybe you need to boot from a Live Linux DVD+R. If no internal DVD-drive, get an external USB DVD-drive/burner.

Another lightweight Linux distro that's compatible with very old computers is Linux Lite(= a 900MB ISO file).
....... The lightest Linux distro is Puppy Linux, eg Tahrpup 6.0.5, which totally runs off RAM memory through a CD, DVD or USB-stick, ie no need internal hard-drives.

[wallyUSA]

Is the USB bootable? Can you test booting to it on another pc?

[M_Mynaardt]

@ Mynaaardt

How did you install Peppermint 7.? Also with a USB-stick.? Maybe you need to boot from a Live Linux DVD+R. If no internal DVD-drive, get an external USB DVD-drive/burner.

Another lightweight Linux distro that's compatible with very old computers is Linux Lite(= a 900MB ISO file).
....... The lightest Linux distro is Puppy Linux, eg Tahrpup 6.0.5, which totally runs off RAM memory through a CD, DVD or USB-stick, ie no need internal hard-drives.

Hello there:

Yes, I did install Peppermint 7 with a USB stick the last time.
Which is why this seems a bit odd.

The laptop itself has 1.5 GB memory. So that's never been a problem.
If I can't figure out why this computer won't boot from a USB, I'll try a CD or DVD.
I only do that as a last resort to save on burning CDs for a one-off.

I'll also keep those other distros in mind.

[M_Mynaardt]

Is the USB bootable? Can you test booting to it on another pc?

It didn't occur to me to try booting another computer with that USB stick.
I booted another computer just fine.

However, I did notice that the other computer's BIOS set up recognized it as a USB HDD.
But the Toshiba didn't show that in the boot order, just "USB Memory"

Do you think that might be a grub and/or hardware issue, maybe?

[michael louwe]

@ M_Mynaardt,

It's most likely a hardware issue since the laptop is very old, eg faulty USB ports.

[M_Mynaardt]

I was thinking that's probably the case.
I'll keep plugging at it and see if I can get it going somehow.
Thanks for your time, though.

[whatever_whatever]

I have like exactly the same issue!
The same computer and problem description. Only I have Elementary OS installed previously (installed easily with USB). I have tried all USB ports, few different pendrive's, also another distro (Linux Lite). I used a few programs to create bootable USB, including one recomended by Linux Mint website. Nothing worked so far. I also see "USB Memory" in boot settings and it doesn't boot from the stick. However, the system itself sees the content of the pendrive.

Any fresh ideas?