For a period of time, Compaq systems were configured so they'd only boot off a hidden partition on the drive. I fought with one for weeks (years ago) before I had the bright idea to take the drive out and zero it manually. After that, it would boot off CD and USB like any other system. -Josh More On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 8:24 AM, Jeremy MountainJohnson <jeremy.mountainjohnson at gmail.com> wrote: > Greetings, > > My apologies if I posted this twice, I accidentally used another > e-mail for the first attempt. > > I have a handful of Compaq 6200 Mini tower slim chassis (i5, 3.1 ghz) > that I'm trying to boot from a Linux thumb drive but none will boot. > Has anyone used these before with USB booting? > > The thumb drive is USB3, however it works fine on all other systems, > including USB2 only older Core2 systems. In fact, I can even boot Macs > just fine using Plop boot CD (permits booting of USB from CD). So, > it's definitely not the thumb drive or OS (also have proper hook for > block devices is compiled in the kernel image). > > I tried using a powered USB hub as well, and Plop boot CD in these > machines but it won't see the drive either way. The BIOS is set up to > allow booting from USB. When I boot to the start up menu, it doesn't > see the USB drive at all (have tried front and back ports). It's like > it doesn't exist until Windows boots. The drive has a light and it > lights up during POST, so it's getting some power. When I boot into > Windows it sees the drive just fine. > > BIOS firmware is up to date, it uses American Megatrends firmware with > HP branding on it. > > Any thoughts? Seems silly that these not so old workstations won't > boot to USB... > > -- > Jeremy MountainJohnson > Jeremy.MountainJohnson at gmail.com > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list