Official GIGABYTE Forum
Questions about GIGABYTE products => Motherboards with AMD processors => Topic started by: ShadesOfGrey on September 13, 2010, 10:01:24 pm
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Any attempt to boot from a USB Flash drive results in a "Boot error" message appearing after the "Loading Operating System" message.
In the BIOS I have "Legacy USB Support" enabled and "Legacy USB Storage" enabled. I've tried enabling and disabling the floppy drive as well. I've tried plugging the Flash drive into all the available USB (2.0) ports with no luck. I've used two different Flash drives, one is 2GB the other 64MB. Both boot just fine when plugged into my laptop, so it's most definitely a problem with the GA-785GMT-USB3.
I'm using the latest official BIOS version F3. I have seen mention of a beta BIOS version F3A. However, I haven't been able to find it anywhere I would be comfortable downloading it. I'm also not sure if F3A actually supersedes the official F3 as I'm unable to read the pages on which F3A is mentioned.
BTW, I can access files on either Flash drive from Q-Flash. Q-Flash is how I updated the BIOS from the stock F1.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might resolve this problem? I'd like to have my diagnostic/recovery tools on a medium a little more durable and portable than CD/DVD.
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But have you formatted your USB drive to FAT32? ;)
I take it that you have tried TweakTown already?
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But have you formatted your USB drive to FAT32? ;)
I take it that you have tried TweakTown already?
No I haven't tried TweakTown. Not really familiar with the site to be perfectly honest. I did poke around a bit just now however, but haven't found any references to the GA-785GMT-USB3. In fact the "Latest BIOS" thread on the GIGABYTE forum appears to be exclusively for Intel based GIGABYTE motherboards as far as I've seen. I'll keep poking around though. I also haven't found any references to the GA-785GMT-USB3 in the GIGABYTE forum as of yet.
Sorry, I thought the implication of accessing files from Q-Flash indicated the drives were formatted as FAT. Specifically FAT16 (formatted under Linux) for the 64MB drive and FAT32 (formatted under Windows XP) for the 2GB drive.
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No I haven't tried TweakTown. Not really familiar with the site to be perfectly honest. I did poke around a bit just now however, but haven't found any references to the GA-785GMT-USB3. In fact the "Latest BIOS" thread on the GIGABYTE forum appears to be exclusively for Intel based GIGABYTE motherboards as far as I've seen. I'll keep poking around though. I also haven't found any references to the GA-785GMT-USB3 in the GIGABYTE forum as of yet.
Sorry, I thought the implication of accessing files from Q-Flash indicated the drives were formatted as FAT. Specifically FAT16 (formatted under Linux) for the 64MB drive and FAT32 (formatted under Windows XP) for the 2GB drive.
You should be able to find the latest drivers on the TweakTown Forum. I know they have a driver archive for older drivers too which can be handy aty times.
Regarding the formatting of the USB drives you are of couse correct it's just that I didn't think anyone used FAT16 any more ;)
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You should be able to find the latest drivers on the TweakTown Forum. I know they have a driver archive for older drivers too which can be handy aty times.
Regarding the formatting of the USB drives you are of couse correct it's just that I didn't think anyone used FAT16 any more ;)
Well, FAT32 really doesn't offer any really significant advantages for a drive only 64MB in size. ;D
Do you mean BIOS instead of driver? Because I don't think any driver can possibly rectify not being able to boot from an USB Flash drive. That is unless you implying there is a driver I can install under the BIOS. :o :)
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Yes my bad, I did mean BIOS. Just too many questions to answer ;) Sorry.
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Just out of interest what did you set in your boot order option?
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Your USB drive must be inserted into the port before booting and the boot from USB option needs to be selected in the BIOS first. You will need the drive inserted for this option to appear.
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Hi there,
what are you attempting to BOOT from the USB Drive?
Are you trying to install an OS from the USB Drive if yes which OS is it?
Do you have any hard drives installed on the motherboard and if yes, is the controller set to IDE/AHCI or RAID? Also what are the make and model of the HDD's?
I have successfully installed Windows 7 and Linux from a USB stick onto a couple of these boards using the F3 BIOS and the only time I have encountered the "Boot error" message appearing after the "Loading Operating System" message has been due to the HDD I was trying to install onto, not being recognised by the Windows 7 OS. I had to initialise the disk on another PC before I could go any further.
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Just out of interest what did you set in your boot order option?
Presently:
- [Hard Disk]
- [CD-ROM]
- [Disabled]
However, I have attempted re-ordering them in several different combinations, incl. all possible USB devices. I also tried fiddling with the "Hard Disk Boot Priority" option. Same deal, "Boot Error" each and every time. Pressing the "Boot Menu" hotkey ("F12" in my case) and selecting any of the USB options also fails.
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Your USB drive must be inserted into the port before booting and the boot from USB option needs to be selected in the BIOS first. You will need the drive inserted for this option to appear.
Just to clarify, are you saying that a "boot from USB" option will appear if and only if a USB device is plugged in prior to boot or prior to power on? I've tried doing both and never have I seen this option appear in the BIOS. Which I did in fact expect based on previous experience. However, with the variations in BIOS, I couldn't be sure this option was supposed to be present in my case (with the GA-785GMT-USB3).
I suppose I may have been looking on the wrong menu. Would that be in the "Advanced BIOS Features" or the "Integrated Peripherals" menu? Or perhaps in some other menu entirely?
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Would that be in the "Advanced BIOS Features" or the "Integrated Peripherals" menu? Or perhaps in some other menu entirely?
From memory the Advanced BIOS Features.
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Hi there,
what are you attempting to BOOT from the USB Drive?
Are you trying to install an OS from the USB Drive if yes which OS is it?
Do you have any hard drives installed on the motherboard and if yes, is the controller set to IDE/AHCI or RAID? Also what are the make and model of the HDD's?
I have successfully installed Windows 7 and Linux from a USB stick onto a couple of these boards using the F3 BIOS and the only time I have encountered the "Boot error" message appearing after the "Loading Operating System" message has been due to the HDD I was trying to install onto, not being recognised by the Windows 7 OS. I had to initialise the disk on another PC before I could go any further.
At first, I wanted to boot http://partedmagic.com/ (http://partedmagic.com/) in order to perform 'off-line' file system checks... To make a long story short, Ubuntu 10.04 and subsequently Linux Mint 9 (which I installed via a Live DVD) seem to have trouble completing mandatory file system checks in certain cases. So I needed some way to boot from a Live distro of some sort to check the file systems. I decided on Parted Magic because I was familiar with it from a completely different situation and thought using a Flash drive would be more convenient than a CD/DVD. In order to do this I downloaded UNetbootin. I've also tried creating a bootable Flash drive following instructions provided by http://www.sysresccd.org/ (http://www.sysresccd.org/) and http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/). As well as using UNetbootin to boot FreeDOS. All of these worked fine on my laptop (an MSI GT735), but fail on the GA-785GMT-USB3.
I'm presently booting from an 80GB Western Digital WD800JD-32HK. I also have two 500GB Seagate ST3500418AS in a RAID 1 Array. In my case I decided to set the controller to RAID. If it's important, I tried toggling the "OnChip SATA Port4/5 Type" from "IDE" to "As SATA Type" (and back again) just to see if that might have any effect. It didn't.
The system boots fine, I'm using right now. :-) I had no trouble installing Linux Mint 9 from DVD... Well except I had to disable the "Onboard USB 3.0 controller" for a time (which I have toggled on and off during my troubleshooting). IIRC, udev and the the xHCI driver weren't getting along after installation. Once I updated one or the other, the kernel panic(s) I was experiencing went away. Anyway, there don't appear to be any incompatibilities between the hard drives and the BIOS.
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From memory the Advanced BIOS Features.
I'll check that ASAP...
I just checked my manual and this option isn't mentioned anywhere... But then again, I'm not using the stock BIOS and motherboard manuals are notoriously filled with errata.
EDIT:
No such option appears in the "Advanced BIOS Features" menu... At least not for me. Can anyone confirm that this option is present for the GA-785GMT-USB3 motherboard with version F3 BIOS? If so, than perhaps I need to re-flash my BIOS or there's something wrong with my MoBo.
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Just out of interest what did you set in your boot order option?
Presently:
- [Hard Disk]
- [CD-ROM]
- [Disabled]
However, I have attempted re-ordering them in several different combinations, incl. all possible USB devices. I also tried fiddling with the "Hard Disk Boot Priority" option. Same deal, "Boot Error" each and every time. Pressing the "Boot Menu" hotkey ("F12" in my case) and selecting any of the USB options also fails.
Just to confirm, you had your USB drive connected (what format was the USB drive file structure?) and you did select the USB drive in your hard drive boot selection options? I found that I needed to specify the USB hard drive (pen drive in your case) in that bios option before I could boot via the USB pen drive.
Will check back later to see how it went.
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From memory the Advanced BIOS Features.
I'll check that ASAP...
I just checked my manual and this option isn't mentioned anywhere... But then again, I'm not using the stock BIOS and motherboard manuals are notoriously filled with errata.
EDIT:
No such option appears in the "Advanced BIOS Features" menu... At least not for me. Can anyone confirm that this option is present for the GA-785GMT-USB3 motherboard with version F3 BIOS? If so, than perhaps I need to re-flash my BIOS or there's something wrong with my MoBo.
That's the Advanced BIOS Features/Boot Priority
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Just to confirm, you had your USB drive connected (what format was the USB drive file structure?) and you did select the USB drive in your hard drive boot selection options? I found that I needed to specify the USB hard drive (pen drive in your case) in that bios option before I could boot via the USB pen drive.
Will check back later to see how it went.
Yes, the flash drives were connected either at power-on and/or reboot. The 64MB drive is formatted FAT16 and the 2GB is formatted FAT32. I have attempted to boot from the "First Boot Device" configured as "USB-HDD", "USB-CDROM", and "USB-Floppy" with and without using the "Boot Menu" (pressing "F12" during POST). In the case of USB-HDD being the boot device, I get a "Boot error" message proceeding the "Loading Operating System" message. In the other cases (IIRC), I only get a "Boot error" if no other boot device is configured (i.e. the 2nd and 3rd "Boot Device" is Disabled or non-bootable). And to reiterate, both flash drives are accessible from "Q-Flash".
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That's the Advanced BIOS Features/Boot Priority
Just to be absolutely clear, you're talking about the "Hard Disk Boot Priority" sub-menu under "Advanced BIOS Features", correct?
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Thanks for getting back to me so quick.
In the hard disc boot priority option what do you have selected as your first boot hard drive?
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That's the Advanced BIOS Features/Boot Priority
Just to be absolutely clear, you're talking about the "Hard Disk Boot Priority" sub-menu under "Advanced BIOS Features", correct?
I checked the "Hard Disk Boot Priority" sub-menu and the options appeared (roughly) as follows:
1. SCSI-0 : WD800JD-32HKA0
2. SCSI-1 : RAID Ary 2
3. Bootable Add-in Cards
There was no option specific to USB, so I tried making "Bootable Add-in Cards" have first priority. The result was the same as before, "Boot error". If there is supposed to be a USB specific option in this sub-menu, I don't have it. Before I try re-flashing the BIOS, I'm going try a couple other Flash drives and see what other tools I can find to make them bootable.
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Thanks for getting back to me so quick.
In the hard disc boot priority option what do you have selected as your first boot hard drive?
Read my reply to Dark Mantis, immediately preceding this one.
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Right I see it.
When I go into that option with my USB pen drive connected I see the USB drive as an option.
I suspect that is where we are having a problem, namely you do not see it as an option.
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Right I see it.
When I go into that option with my USB pen drive connected I see the USB drive as an option.
I suspect that is where we are having a problem, namely you do not see it as an option.
Well, that's interesting... It's not like the BIOS isn't detecting the drive. "Q-Flash" has no problem accessing any of the USB flash drives I have. That is unless "Q-Flash" has some other means of mounting USB devices?
Might you be able to tell me if this option appears regardless of whether the USB Flash drive is bootable or not? That information would certainly help me narrow down if my problem is with the USB Flash drives and/or how I prepared them, or if my problem is with my MoBo and/or its BIOS.
BTW, which BIOS version do you happen to be using?
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That's the Advanced BIOS Features/Boot Priority
Just to be absolutely clear, you're talking about the "Hard Disk Boot Priority" sub-menu under "Advanced BIOS Features", correct?
I checked the "Hard Disk Boot Priority" sub-menu and the options appeared (roughly) as follows:
1. SCSI-0 : WD800JD-32HKA0
2. SCSI-1 : RAID Ary 2
3. Bootable Add-in Cards
There was no option specific to USB, so I tried making "Bootable Add-in Cards" have first priority. The result was the same as before, "Boot error". If there is supposed to be a USB specific option in this sub-menu, I don't have it. Before I try re-flashing the BIOS, I'm going try a couple other Flash drives and see what other tools I can find to make them bootable.
Yes that's where I would expect to see it as long as it was plugged in before booting. I wonder if it's because you are booting from a SCSI card. Does it have it's own BIOS?
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I have now checked with two USB pen drives and both are seen. One is the USB drive I use to flash bios with.
I checked on a motherboard with F2 bios.
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Yes that's where i would expect to see it as long as it was plugged in before booting. I wonder if it's because you are booting from a SCSI card. Does it have it's own BIOS?
Don't know exactly... It's not a discrete HBA, the RAID functionality is provided by AMD's 710 southbridge. I suppose it could have its own BIOS. And if 1Day's reply is anything to go by, whether the RAID controller has a BIOS shouldn't be affecting whether the the system can boot from an USB Flash drive. However, I will try disabling the RAID controller and checking whether the options under "Hard Disk Boot Priority" change at all.
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Yes it was just an idea because we seem to be running short on them now and I noticed that you were booting from a SCSI drive. :-\
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I have now checked with two USB pen drives and both are seen. One is the USB drive I use to flash bios with.
I checked on a motherboard with F2 bios.
Were they both bootable? I'm wondering if the means by which I prepared the drives is causing the BIOS not to detect 'active' status on my USB Flash drives. Or if the problem is simply that my motherboard, for some unknown reason, is unable to boot from USB Flash drives...
Well, I'm going to first try disabling the RAID functionality and see what that does. If that doesn't work, I'll try using Windows to repartition, make active, and reformat my Flash drive. And If even that doesn't work, I'll try downloading the F2 BIOS and see if my problem is just the BIOS version I'm using.
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Yes it was just an idea because we seem to be running short on them now and I noticed that you were booting from a SCSI drive. :-\
i know the feeling. ::)
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I can't really see it being unable to boot from the USB drives as you said QFlash could read them so it knows they exist.
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You should be able to find the latest drivers on the TweakTown Forum. I know they have a driver archive for older drivers too which can be handy aty times.
Regarding the formatting of the USB drives you are of couse correct it's just that I didn't think anyone used FAT16 any more ;)
FYI, there doesn't appear to be any Beta BIOS for the GA-785GMT-USB3. I've searched TweakTown ad found only 16 some odd posts concerning it. None relating to my specific problem.
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I've made some headway! It seems (presumably) the F3 BIOS is very, very picky about how the drive is prepared. Following most of the instructions I found here, http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=345 (http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=345), I was able to boot from the USB Flash drive. However, instead of formatting the drive as NTFS, I formatted it as FAT32. I also didn't actually copy the contents of a Windows Vista/7 DVD onto the drive. Of course that meant I only got an error about "BOOTMGR is missing", but I was able to boot.
My best guess is the BIOS for some reason doesn't like the boot sectors generated by the other methods I've tried. Now I have to figure out if there are any other methods to make Linux boot from USB Flash drives in a way that my BIOS will be happy with, or if I have to figure out how to boot Linux from Microsoft's Windows Boot Manager. Either way, I'll post what I learn here.
I suppose I should also try rolling back my BIOS version to F2 and/or F1 and see if this problem is unique to F3...
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Yes if you have the will to live still ;) It would be interesting to see if it is specific to F3. At least now you seem to be winning.
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I use the universal USB installer.
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/
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Until recently, I hadn't had the spare time to experiment. Now that I have, the situation is even more confusing... Or perhaps I should say mysterious.
As I said, I was able to use approximately the method here, http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=345 (http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=345), to get the 64MB Flash drive to boot. I was also able to get the 2GB Flash drive to boot using almost the same method. I stopped short of copying Microsoft's Boot Manager in the 2GB drive's case. The interesting thing is that now, no matter what method I use (Linux Live USB Creator, UBCD, UNetbbotin, or the Universal USB Installer), both Flash drives boot. I haven't been able to test if this is an F3 specific issue, yet. Now that both drives I've been using for testing boot regardless of the method used to prepare them; I'm unable to determine if the problem is revision specific.
Another interesting wrinkle that I didn't notice until after making the Flash drives bootable (with DISKPART) is that both Flash drives appear as '"H"ard "D"isk "D"rive(s)' from within Q-Flash as opposed to "Floppy" drives. Previously I chalked this up Q-Flash employing floppy emulation (i.e. CD boot disks). Especially since Q-Flash correctly reported the capacities of both drives even as 'floppies'.
From these experiences, I've come to the conclusion that the GA-785GMT-USB3's BIOS is not picky about the bootloader per se. But the BIOS is picky about the active status on the Flash drives and/or the partition table when using any other method to create them than Microsoft's DISKPART. Right now, I suspect it's the partition table (or lack thereof) that is the key to this dilemma. I guess my next step is to wipe the partition table on one or the other drive and see if that has any affect. If that fails to 'reset' the drives to a non-bootable state, I'll have to scrounge up some more test drives.
I may leave this topic go dormant for a while... Figuring out this puzzle has lost some of its urgency, if you know what I mean? ;D Nevertheless, I'll be back with my findings eventually.
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Ah, welcome to the club. We can always use another tester prepared to take on a challenge. :D
Some things that you might like to consider.
It seems as if some USB drives will not work in QFlash.
The smaller the USB drive the more chance of it working.
I have never done anything with my USB drives except for formatting them in FAT32 prior to using them for QFlash.
Don't know how this will affect your research but as they say: "All information is useful".
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Just to add alittle bit more to what absic has just said, I have booted with all different sizes of drive from less than 64Mb to 16GB and only ever formatted them using windows to FAT16 or FAT32. So far I have not had a problem with them being recognised. Maybe this is because all have been formatted through Windows. If you need any more information for your testing feel free to contact me.
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REMOVED DUE TO DOUBLE POST.
http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,3089.0.html
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From these experiences, I've come to the conclusion that the GA-785GMT-USB3's BIOS is not picky about the bootloader per se. But the BIOS is picky about the active status on the Flash drives and/or the partition table when using any other method to create them than Microsoft's DISKPART. Right now, I suspect it's the partition table (or lack thereof) that is the key to this dilemma. I guess my next step is to wipe the partition table on one or the other drive and see if that has any affect. If that fails to 'reset' the drives to a non-bootable state, I'll have to scrounge up some more test drives.
I may leave this topic go dormant for a while... Figuring out this puzzle has lost some of its urgency, if you know what I mean? ;D Nevertheless, I'll be back with my findings eventually.
Did you find a solution?
I have your same problem ("Boot Error") with a JetFlashTranscend 4GB and a GA-8902FXA-UD5.
I don't need and don't want to install Windows 7 or Vista, I would like to have a bootable pendrive with a iso linux image.
I used unetbootin to create the thumb.
I have also tried Linux Live USB Creator, but with the same sad result...
I think it's a problem of Gigabyte motherboards or their drivers, because I never had similar problems with other brands.
I'm sure the usb flash drive is bootable, I tested it on another computer.
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There is an issue booting with certain USB pendrives. If possible use the smallest drive you can as this seems to increase the chances of success.
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There is an issue booting with certain USB pendrives. If possible use the smallest drive you can as this seems to increase the chances of success.
Smaller then a 4GB drive? Wow...
I'm really surprised. Is 'it possible that a last generation motherboard has problems so silly?
I hope they close this issue soon, because I've seen many posts like this surfing google and many of them are long-standing...
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To be honest I have not heard anything about this being worked on but that doesn't mean that it's not. :-\
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(See end of post for known problems!)
Thanks to this thread and others, I was able to get one 2GB USB drive working and booting.
1. start > run > cmd (with admin rights!)
2. diskpart
sel disk 1
clean
cre par pri
active
format fs=fat32 quick
exit
3. syslinux -d /boot/syslinux f:
(f: is my USB volume letter)
Bingo. USB drive that boots any OS under F8 and F9 bios revisions, and probably others.
Btw, all the guides about using syslinux tell you to use the switches "-mad", but in order to work with Gigabyte boards just the "-d" is necessary. Diskpart handles the functionality of the "-a" and "-m" switches.
== Now for a problem that I can't fix! ==
If your USB disk has a NULL "Friendly Name" (you can find this in device manager in Windows device manager, in device properties > details > Friendly Name), the GA-MA785 board will crash (with flashing text).
Seems that a bit of code in the bios expects all devices to have a Friendly Name, and a device which doesn't causes a hard crash. Q-Flash doesn't care, however. The USB device without a friendly name can still be used for a bios update. It is detected in Q-Flash as HD 1 0.
Hope this extra info helps!
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Thanks for the update. Hopefully it might help someone else in the future. ;)
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But with Grub4Dos still fails...
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Like many I ran into this problem trying to boot to a USB flash drive on a new build with a Gigabyte 880GM-UD2H motherboard. However unlike a lot of folks out there I had access to several computers and several flash drives of various capacity from several manufactures for testing. SO After 5 hours of searching forums with no solution in sight I stumbled upon k9warze's suggestion and set to work testing it.
Background:
Drives:
Sandisk Cruzer Micro 4GB (X4)
Sandisk Cruzer Micro 2GB (X1)
Patriot 8GB (X10)
All of our Patriot sticks were initially set up with UBCD using a Linux Mint 10 HD install with UNetbootn (formated with Gparted). All failed to boot the system.
Configuration attempts:
USB Legacy:Disabled/Enabled
USB Mass Storage: Disabled/Enabled
Boot Priority: 1st USB HDD
F12 boot menu USB HDD, USB CD ROM, USB FDD, +Hard Drive
No combination of BIOS settings or boot menu options would work. All attempts yielded the same "Starting Operating System...Boot Error" :heink: message.
Several of the Sandisk Cruzer 4GB sticks had been configured as Windows 7 installation media using Windows 7 disk manager to format them to NTFS, and using the Microsoft USB/DVD download tool. These sticks booted perfectly from the F12 menu.
The 2GB Sandisk Cruzer had been configured with DRBL using Linux Mint 10 HD install with UNetbootn (formated with Gparted). It also failed in the exact same way as the other sticks formated with Gparted.
Solution:
On a system running Windows 7 all sticks in question were formated using Disk Manager to either NTFS (for Windows boot media) or Fat32 (for Linux based boot media). After the sticks were formated, the ones that would be receiving Windows media (iso) were configured on Windows with the Microsoft USB/DVD download tool. The others were configured with Linux media on a Linux Mint 10 system with Unetbootn. The Linux sticks were NOT reformatted with gparted or any other Linux based tools.
After formating and configuring the sticks all were tested against two identical systems with the Gigabyte 880GM-UD2H, with optimized defaults set in the bios. From the F12 menu all drives appeared under the "+Hard Disk" section and booted the system as intended!!!!!
Conclusion:
Based on the testing I did tonight I'm fairly sure that the problem and the solution are one in the same. Award must be using a Microsoft provided MBR driver, or mounting system of some sort. So long as you work with in that system your fine (by formating your sticks using Windows). As soon as you step outside that box (with a new stick that was formated via a UNIX or Linux system) your screwed. Anyway hopefully this info helps. If it does and anyone else can confirm that this works I'd appreciate it...as I'm sure would others.