Can't even install an OS

On the computer in my signature, I've been trying out a few different operating systems, and I had success doing it before on this machine, but then for whatever reason it stopped wanting to boot from USB to install the OS (don't have an optical drive). The HDD and USB flash drive both used to show up in EFI boot sources, but then they randomly moved into legacy boot sources in the BIOS with no way to change them back. I reset the BIOS back to stock with the same issue. I could hold down F9 at boot and force it to boot off the flash drive, but it the screen just goes blank with a flashing cursor.

I removed the CMOS battery for about 10 minutes, and now when I boot it I get a message about "161 real time clock power loss" so I have to go back into the BIOS to set the defaults which I've done, but this happens every time I start it up and I still can't get it to load the OS. It just beeps every time I start it telling me about the CMOS, and even after saving the default settings this still happens.

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Try clearing the cmos (jumper on mobo). Maybe try replacing the battery

tungureanu said:

Try clearing the cmos (jumper on mobo). Maybe try replacing the battery

Click to expand...

I did both of those things and it fixed the RTC error, but it still won't boot any OS off a flash drive. I used the same flash drive on another computer to boot a live Debian OS and it was working OK, so it's not the flash drive.

I still get that black screen with a command prompt style flashing cursor, and I've tried 4 different bootable OSs that I made from ISOs with Universal USB Installer and UNetbootin. I successfully did install a couple of Linux distros yesterday just fine with the same method, but now something has broken it.

The BIOS is seeing the USB flash drive.

Have you tried another USB port? I've found that it'll read fine on a USB3 port, but may not like installing unless its in a USB2 port.

You do not need (u)EFI boot unless you are running a GPT, at 160GB I see no reason for that since it takes up more space and requires a FAT32 partition.

Depending on your USB sticks formatting you will need to set primary hard drisk and then in hard drive boot priority set the first item to your USB stick (start up with usb stick in of course)

OR if not recognized as a hard drive you have to setup to boot other and enable all USB boot device BEFORE hard drive.

If none of that works use a different stick


Oh, make sure you are using a usb 2.0 port.

I found the problem! There's a fault with the machine that is very common on this model where USB boot only functions sporadically, or not at all. Since this machine does not have any SATA power plugs on it, and because there's no optical drive, I had a problem. There is however a spare SATA port so I got a spare computer with a SATA optical drive, and put it next to the problematic computer, then put the SATA cable from the optical drive of the working computer to the motherboard of the faulty machine, and used the PSU from the good machine to power the optical drive. I got my OS installed from DVD, and it's working fine now! It's just a real pain to do, but hopefully I won't need an OS reinstall often.