Post #1091762

2026-04-12 04:24 UTC

Ok folks, tech question. My SO gifted me a fantastic little budget laptop made by Crealander. American Megatrends bios, Intel celeron N4020, comes with TPM 2.0 and Win 11. Obviously perfect for a Mint swap! Except I can NOT force this bastard to boot from USB. It simply hangs after accessing the USB as evidenced from the activity lights on my drive. I have done this many times but this stonewalling is a new problem to me. Things I have tried: different thumb drive different .iso, different OS (tried Bazzite, Mint, and Mint light) different bootable device maker (Balena Etcher, Rufus) I&#39;ve done every obvious BIOS method (deactivated the HD mbr, manually set boot override, tried with TPM on and off) If anyone has any ideas I would love to try them. I&#39;ve already run the debloater for win 11 but this nifty lil lappy still isn&#39;t snappy. Not slow, but certainly not as happy as Mint will make it. Thanks! Edit: I tried booting from an external dvd drive just now, no luck.

Replies (6)

@v_v@mastodon.catgirl.cloud 2026-04-12 04:30

@TeflonTrout could install mint onto the drive from another system and put it back in once it's installed

Open ##1490327
@brettm@swarm.coiloptic.org 2026-04-12 04:39

@TeflonTrout@beige.party some devices, eg my lenovo laptop, will not boot from usb memory stick but will boot from usb external hard drive, try that next!

Open ##1490329
@alterelefant@mastodontech.de 2026-04-12 04:42

@TeflonTrout It could indeed be the trusted platform issue. You said you switched it off. If the USB-drive is correctly bootable one would expect it to work. Unsure what is holding it back at that moment.

Open ##1490330
@ChuckMcManis@chaos.social 2026-04-12 05:40

@TeflonTrout My guess is that you don't have an EFI boot block and the BIOS won't boot anything else. Sometimes there is a "legacy boot" enabled in 'security' somewhere. Not that you would have bootable windows media but that would confirm or deny that hypothesis. If a bootable windows media device worked, it's likely looking for EFI. Also, it may not boot any 'non-windows' foreign partition (using the partition type ID)

Open ##1490332
@Oldfartrant@mstdn.ca 2026-04-12 06:15

@TeflonTrout is there an enable boot from usb? Also I had an older laptop that would only boot from the front usb port.

Open ##1490336
@FrankauLux@polyglot.city 2026-04-12 07:19

@TeflonTrout I had a similar problem and this is how I solved it: In my case, the "admin password" field was empty. I put an admin password, and all of a sudden I could enable USB boot. I did the install and removed the pwd. Job done.

Open ##1490338