Can I boot my laptop of a USB Stick?

[Chris S]

My Lenovo R61 Thinkpad won't boot of a USB stick with an ISO on it. I know the USB stick is OK because another laptop will boot of it.

I've pressed F1 and moved the following USB items to the top of the boot order:
USB FDD
USB CD
-USB HDD
Should my laptop recognize the USB stick as one of them?
(and what does the '-' in front of the USB HDD mean?)
When I run it in diags mode I get 'No operating system found' for these items.

When I press F12 only the hard disk, physical CD drive and LAN appear in the boot list.

This is an old laptop that I bought several years ago and I'm now just experimenting with it. It was a £100 'refurb' so it may not have all the original software.

 

[the snail]

dunno, but you can't boot an ISO, it needs to be burnt onto a disc as a file system, and in order to boot from USB, the USB drivers would need to be loaded in BIOS, which wasn't the case in older systems, but might be on newer setups?

 

[Chris S]

the USB drivers would need to be loaded in BIOS, which wasn't the case in older systems, but might be on newer setups?

That could be it - my new laptop will boot of the memory stick. Is there any way of loading the USB drivers in BIOS?

 

[marknotgeorge]

A bit of Google-fu found this on the Lenovo forums from way back in 2009:

Hi Pete7874,



My R61 often fails to see an attached USB hard drive on the first boot. This works for me:

1. Attach USB drive
2. Boot and press F12 to get boot menu. Whoops, no USB drive seen.
3. Ctrl-Alt-Del -> reboot
4. Press F12 to get boot menu. Presto, there's the USB drive. Select it and boot from it

Who knows, maybe the double-boot will work for you too?



Good luck and Happy New Year!

-Frank

Maybe this will work for you?

 

[Chris S]

A bit of Google-fu found this on the Lenovo forums from way back in 2009:
Maybe this will work for you?

Thanks - but it didn't. It's almost as though the USB ports aren't recognised until after the computer has started up.

 

[Markymark]

Maybe that usb needs drivers loading first? Can you burn it to dvd and try booting from that instead?

 

[Chris S]

Can you burn it to dvd and try booting from that instead?

I installed Linux from a DVD, so yes.

I'm trying to get my laptop to boot from a USB stick as a learning exercise. The USB ports work once the laptop has booted-up, do you know how I could get the drivers loaded during the initial start-up?

 

[Markymark]

[
I installed Linux from a DVD, so yes.

I'm trying to get my laptop to boot from a USB stick as a learning exercise. The USB ports work once the laptop has booted-up, do you know how I could get the drivers loaded during the initial start-up?

I'm sure it's a driver issue then. As for getting it to work during start-up, no, sorry but there's much more IT peeps here than me so I'm sure someone will be along shortly....