Linux – Cannot boot from Yumi multiboot USB stick

backtracklinuxusb-flash-driveyumi

I've just created a multiboot USB stick using Yumi. I tried to start my notebook (Asus K70IO) using it, but all I see is just a black screen with blinking underscore even after waiting for minutes. If during this time I remove the USB stick I get the message: "Operating system load error".

How do I properly load my Yumi USB stick and use it? I've tried formatting it using Yumi's checkbox to format the stick in FAT32 too, but it didn't help.

Now I tried to use Sardu 2.0.5 and met same problem: black screen and blinkin underscore, if I remove stick I see "Operating system load error" and my OS starts to boot.

At the same time if I create bootable USB stick from ISO using UltraISO it boots smoothly.

Best Answer

I know its a couple years late, but here goes....

It can be a factor of factory formatting. Many USB sticks are formatted USB-FDD (Floppy disk) when what you really need is USB-HDD. Windows inherently formats USB drives as FDD for which it will not write to MBR. But with a specific command line called DISKPART you can wipe the disk and set it up as a USB-HDD with an appropriate MBR. Here are some pretty simple steps, take caution though, one small misstep could send to "no-reboot land":

Run Comand Prompt as Admin and use the following commands:
DISKPART
LIST DISK - find the disk number of the usb drive
SELECT DISK # - # being your usb drive ( WARNING MAKE SURE YOU ARE SELECTING THE CORRECT DRIVE OTHERWISE THIS COULD BE DISASTROUS )
CLEAN
ACTIVE - Make the drive active
FORMAT FS=FAT32 - fat16/32 are the best option for syslinux
ASSIGN
EXIT

This should get you ready to go unless the USB drive is truly the culprit. This just fixed the exact SAME problem I was having with YUMI.

Related Solutions

What are the differences bewteen using ISOs vs extracting distributions in multiboot LiveUSBs

I first thought that YUMI extracts the files to the hard disk, but that's not the case. My understanding now is that YUMI can store on the pen-drive either :

The ISO as-is, or
The extracted files from the ISO as a file system within a partition

This is the reason that for booting the extracted files it can use Syslinux, but it needs GRUB to boot from ISO.

I believe that the idea here is to improve performance by avoiding the overhead caused by using the ISO file-system. Apparently, the file-system used for the extracted files is more efficient than the one built into the ISO, which is after-all that of a CD.

There is also probably an additional overhead involved in having a two-level access : USB disk to access the ISO, then accessing the ISO file-system. This might involve virtualization-type overhead by GRUB to make Linux believe that the ISO is in effect a CD.

I have no information about the relative performance of both architectures, extracted vs. ISO, and the improvement (if any) probably heavily depends on the type of work that you do.

Linux – Fedora: Create windows 8.1 bootable USB

Just now, I successfully created a bootable USB from a Windows 8.1 ISO containing a UDF filesystem. This will properly boot a UEFI machine into UEFI mode for subsequent install. It will not boot a BIOS machine or a UEFI machine in BIOS compatibility mode.

Mount the ISO:

sudo mount -t udf -o loop,ro,unhide /path/to/file.iso /mnt

Insert the USB drive.
Run fdisk and specify the device name of the USB drive; for example:
```
sudo fdisk /dev/sdc
```
Delete any existing partition table and create a new one.
Create a new partition of at least 4.5 GB. Mark it bootable and set its type to 7 (HPFS/NTFS/ExFAT).
Write changes and exit fdisk.
Create a FAT-32 file system in the new partition; for example:
```
sudo mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdc1
```
Mount this partition to an existing subdirectory; for example:
```
sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /media/usbstick
```
Copy all of the files from the mounted ISO into this directory:
```
sudo cp -rv /mnt/* /media/usbstick
```
Sync the file systems just to be sure:
```
sudo sync
```

Unmount both items previously mounted:

sudo umount /media/usbstick
sudo umount /mnt

Best Answer

Related Solutions

What are the differences bewteen using ISOs vs extracting distributions in multiboot LiveUSBs

Linux – Fedora: Create windows 8.1 bootable USB

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