All of a sudden I cannot boot from USB, what happened?

smeddy

New PowerSpec B249: Windows 11: Settings->Recovery->Advanced Restart - I could restart with USB boot option just fine from this screen, then all of a sudden the USB Restart option disappeared and was replaced by a "trouble shooting" option, and no apparent way to reboot from USB. Microsoft says the PowerSpec "reset the BIOS to UEFI" and there was nothing they could do. Don't know what that means but I can agree with them that it is not a Windows issue. The AsRock BIOS utility does not offer a USB boot option. Why? What happened? How to reset?

Vaganza

You may be able to reboot and then hit F8 a few times, that should allow you to select which boot device you want to use

PowerSpec_MikeW

@smeddy

F11 is the boot menu on that board, tap it rapidly as it starts and you should be able to select the flash drive on the boot menu.

The behavior for this menu is it won't show it unless it detects a bootable flash drive on the recovery mode menu.

smeddy

F8 takes me to an error screen telling me my computer "needs repair". I can continue the boot with no other apparent problems and Windows runs fine. I do not get a splash screen during boot advising me what keys will do what. This is very unorthodox. On the verge of returning the computer.

smeddy

F11 takes me to a boot option screen with one option, boot from the hard drive, even though there is bootable media in a USB port. What puzzles me is that this all worked just fine several times out of the box, until it didn't. I have re-created the boot USB a couple of times, no difference. What changed? Have decided to take it in and get if solved on the spot.

PowerSpec_MikeW

@smeddy

It's just not detecting the flash drive in that case. I'd verify it's read in the OS first.

smeddy

As it turns out, you are correct. The USB boot media was created with UNetbootin from the iso file as recommended by Ubuntu. I don't know what it created but it wasn't recognizable. It did work at least once but the Ubuntu install failed. During repeated attempts the USB was never recognized again. At MicroCenter, we verified there was noting wrong with the system, so I created a new boot volume with Etcher. Worked perfectly and all is well. I don't know what happened with UNetbootin but can't say I care at this point. Thanks to all for the help.

PowerSpec_MikeW

@smeddy

Glad you figured it out. With bootable EFI media, you shouldn't even need tools like that, Etcher, or Rufus anymore. If it's EFI bootable, just extract to the flash drive. So long as it sees the EFI path (EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi) you're going to be able to boot to it. Windows 10/11 media as an example, their tool will create media for you. But you if you download the ISO and extract it to a flash drive (NTFS, wim file is usually too large for FAT32. Their tool splits it using esd file type.) it'll be bootable right away. If you're ever trying to boot anything legacy, do remember to enable CSM in the BIOS, it's not enabled as a default and this would prevent a legacy boot. This is likely the cause of the issue you experienced.

smeddy

Thanks for the lessonMike! I had no idea... I don't do this often. I did see much of what you said in some of the on-line forums, but nobody really put it all together like you did. So thanks again!