Boot problems after installing LL to USB

[ranwaldo]

I have installed LinuxLite 4.2 onto a USB flash drive from a DVD containing the .iso. I tried to be very careful but something went badly wrong.

Here are the symptoms I have now:

• Booting from the HD with no USB device results in the prompt: grub rescue>
  
• Booting from the USB fails. I just see eternally a non responsive black screen with an underscore cursor at the top.
  
• Booting from the HD with a the USB device displays a menu where I can choose to boot Linux Lite or Windows 10. They both will boot successfully.
  

Any insights or suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I am thinking of getting the Boot Repair Tool and hacking with that but I am kind of in the dark here.

TIA, ~Randy

[firenice03]

Code:

I have installed LinuxLite 4.2 onto a USB flash drive from a DVD containing the .iso.

Sounds like this is exactly what you did.. To clarify?

You downloaded the ISO and made a DVD (LiveDVD) and with a USB plugged in you installed LL, and doing so installed LL onto the USB (not the hard drive)..
And in doing so Grub (LL boot loader) was installed to the USB...

This probably why LL/Windows boots fine with the USB plugged in and they don't without it. And this is just my take on it...

You could most likely move grub to the HDD but without the USB attached you would again error. The easiest would be to reinstall LL to the HDD (create a partition) then LL and Windows would boot successfully with or without the USB..

[ranwaldo]

firenice03,

It was my intention to install LL on the USB flash drive which could them be booted on other computers. I did not intend to make any changes to the HDD.

Your suggestion to install LL without removing Windows on the HDD seems like a decent idea. I have enough disk space. It would fix the currently untenable position of not being able to boot anything without the USB drive connected. Plus I would have LL available.

But I would still like to figure out how to correctly create a bootable LL USB drive without messing up the HDD boot.

Thank you very much for the reply, ~Randy

[firenice03]

But I would still like to figure out how to correctly create a bootable LL USB drive without messing up the HDD boot.

For this you may want to look at a LiveUSB with Persistence... The Persistence piece will allow the Live Environment to save changes..
I think there has been posts on this topic...

*Updated... Font size was tiny*

[ranwaldo]

Many thanks to 'yannubuntu' and the developers of Boot Repair Tools. https://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair/home

I downloaded the Boot Repair Tools disk image, created a bootable DVD. and booted it. Running the 'Recommended Repair' solved the issue completely.

Once again I can successfully boot the laptop without a USD device plugged in (whew). And now I can boot Linux Lite directly from the USB stick.

Not only that I can boot the LL USB stick on my little HP Mini laptop, which was really my goal all along. The Mini is way too slow running Windows but is very snappy running LL!

The issue is solved. This forum is great, and thanks to firenice03 for the help.

[firenice03]

No problem and Glad to hear its sorted out!!!