Trouble booting off of a USB/DVD

[ClutchDisc]

Hi guys, I'm trying to install Linux Mint on a Toshiba Dynabook satellite A100... So far not having much success. I set it in the BIOS to boot off of the DVD, but it won't boot to the disc and will instead boot to win xp. I tried a live USB but the BIOS on this computer is mostly in Japanese so I have no idea if I got that one right. The only thing that is in English is the CD/DVD option.

Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[simple_gifts]

take the DVD to another computer and verify it boots "at all"

 

[ClutchDisc]

It does, I've used this DVD for a lot of Mint installs.

 

[Rand]

disable booting to the hdd
maybe there is something wrong with the dvd drive?

 

[mattwithcats]

Try holding down the "C" key while booting...

 

[ClutchDisc]

Originally Posted By: mattwithcats
Try holding down the "C" key while booting...

Nothing. Just beeps at me..

 

[ClutchDisc]

Originally Posted By: Rand
disable booting to the hdd
maybe there is something wrong with the dvd drive?

How would I disable it? It's all in Japanese too so I can't understand what I'm doing.

Could be something with the drive, I'll try a music CD in the laptop.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
Could be something with the drive, I'll try a music CD in the laptop.

Good idea. One of my old burners acted up. You would go to burn something, it would make the noises and return no error messages. Yet, you couldn't actually read or write anything. A blank DVD would come out blank and brand new and still usable in another machine, and it couldn't play CDs or other DVDs. It was a major hassle, I tell you.

 

[mattwithcats]

Is that a CD/DVD drive or just a CD drive / player?

 

[ClutchDisc]

Yep it's something with the DVD drive. Is there a way to boot this thing from a USB if you can't understand Japanese? I don't even know for sure if it supports USB booting but it is a 2006 so I would think it would.

 

[ClutchDisc]

Originally Posted By: mattwithcats
Is that a CD/DVD drive or just a CD drive / player?

Yea it is a CD/DVD drive. But it wouldn't recognize a music CD so there is definitely something wrong there.

 

[eljefino]

Can you reflash with an english BIOS?

There might be an option to "treat USB as a real HD" or somesuch.

Since it boots to XP, run "Unetbootin" on it-- it creates a small separate partition with your CD image.

 

[ClutchDisc]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
Can you reflash with an english BIOS?

There might be an option to "treat USB as a real HD" or somesuch.

I don't know, how would one go about that?
Originally Posted By: eljefino
Since it boots to XP, run "Unetbootin" on it-- it creates a small separate partition with your CD image.

I've used Unetbootin a little I could give that a try.

 

[Hokiefyd]

It may not boot from USB. I have an Acer/eMachines desktop from 2009 or 2010 that will not boot from USB; it's the HDD or the DVD drive only. And then I have two HP/Compaq laptops from the 2004-2006 timeframe and both support USB boot. All in the BIOS I guess.

I'd second the suggestion to see if you can flash an English BIOS to it. Toshiba may offer help on that (or not). Their support site would probably list the available BIOS flashes.

 

[ClutchDisc]

Well booting from Unetbootin "worked"... It came up fine and I did the install.. Everything seemed to go well. But then I restarted and this is all I get:

Any ideas now? This is beyond my knowledge.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Whew. That looks like a problem. The first thing I'd do is drop to a terminal by pressing Alt - F2, then I'd type:

Code:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg


You'll be prompted for your password; then the X display server will do the best it can to set itself up automatically.

 

[ClutchDisc]

Ok thanks I will try that. I don't have much to lose with this computer.

 

[ClutchDisc]

Didn't do anything...