TeflonTrout  he/him3d ago

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'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've already run the debloater for win 11 but this nifty lil lappy still isn'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.

Show threadFranciscus 3d ago

@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.

Show threadTeflonTrout  he/him3d ago
@FrankauLux what the fuck? Mine is also blank. Trying now will report back in 10
Show threadUilebheist3d ago
@TeflonTrout @FrankauLux I'm guessing somebody decided to impose some extra "security" on what you've bought, by preventing booting from external devices unless there's an admin password and it has been used to set the boot device.
Of course, if somebody steals the laptop they have many ways to access its internal storage so it's just more security theatre.
Show threadFranciscus 3d ago

@Uilebheist @TeflonTrout

Dunno if generalized practice. All I can say is that I work in a repair cafe, so I get all sort of computers and that did the trick on a specific machine...

Show threadTeflonTrout  he/him3d ago

@FrankauLux @Uilebheist

Did not work, but it was well worth the try and always good to add more tricks to the toolbox. Thank you!

Show threadFranciscus 
@TeflonTrout @Uilebheist
sorry to hear that. Well, if you do find, please share. As you say, always nice to have one more tool in the box 😉
Apr 12 at 8:18amWeb