I've built a new PC and I'm struggling to boot an operating system from a USB drive. Here's my setup: I have a Red Devil AMD 6700xt GPU, 32GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR5 RAM, and an AMD Ryzen 5 7600x CPU, all on an Aorus Gigabyte B650 Elite AX motherboard. I'm reusing a 240GB SATA card and a 240GB M.2 drive from my old PC, which I didn't format because I figured they'd wipe when I install the new OS. I'm currently trying to run Pop!_OS 24.04 but can't seem to get it to boot from a USB 3.0 thumb drive. I also prepped another USB drive with a Win10 ISO, but that won't boot either. I've messed around with Secure Boot, Legacy support, and even bought some USB 2.0 drives to see if they work better, but nothing. My system powers on and goes to BIOS just fine, but every time I try to boot from the USB, it loops back to the logo screen. Help me figure out where I'm going wrong here!
3 Answers
Have you considered asking the nerd from the library to create a UEFI boot disk for Ubuntu? Sometimes there’s an option in the BIOS that needs to be manually set to prioritize USB booting. Look for something that says [UEFI] followed by the OS name when booting up.
Just a heads up, when it comes to larger USB drives, sometimes they can be finicky – but generally, you should be good at 64GB.
It sounds like you might not be creating a proper bootable USB. Make sure you’re using a reliable tool for this, like Rufus or Balena Etcher, to create the bootable drive from your ISO files. Also, double-check your BIOS settings to ensure that the USB drive is set as the first boot option.
What do you mean by making it a proper bootable USB? I just followed some instructions I found online.
Yeah, exactly! I had the same issue once, and using a different tool fixed it for me.
Give Linux Mint a shot if Pop!_OS continues to give you issues. Its installer is usually pretty straightforward and bootable right out of the box. Might save you some headaches.
Yeah, I’m going to try that too!
I'll definitely try that next time I visit him!