I bought Sony VAIO SVS1511V9RB today and can't boot it from neither USB flash drive nor bootable CD. I've changed priority of boot drives to Internal CD-ROM, External devices, Internal Hard Disk, Network, and enabled external device boot. But after this only Windows was loaded. Also I tried to press F8, F9, F11 and F12, but also without success, Windows loaded from hard drive instead. I checked that my desktop booted from CD. Notebook can read CD in Windows, and it tries to read it while booting but don't print any messages and just load Windows. BIOS is Insyde H2O, version R0140C5.
Any ideas how to boot it from CD or USB Flash drive?
Best Answer
First of all there're two loader modes in my BIOS. They are Legacy mode and EFI mode. Default one is EFI. What I tried to do is to boot from flash drive with legacy loader while I had EFI mode set in my BIOS. If you need to do this with Sony VAIO SVS1511V9RB, you should rapidly press F11 (about 1.5 minute) until notebook starts boot up from external device.
But finally as far as my Debian distribution had not very stable EFI loader (or hadn't it at all, don't remember), I decided to change loading mode in BIOS and install OS in legacy mode. Now it works fine.
In summery if you don't know that EFI is and you're going to install Linux, probably you'd better switch to Legacy mode using BIOS.