Syslinux - Jan 2014 - USB boot problems on Gigabyte GA-M55Plus-S3G

In message <BLU0-SMTP4359BC7EA366B1FB76EA9188BBF0 at phx.gbl>, 
Ady <ady-sf at hotmail.com> wrote:
>I am probably misunderstanding something. We seem to go backwards.
Yes, and ever moreso.
>"Something" changed. If you now cannot see your USB drive in your 
>list (press F12 during POST), there is no point on redacting 
>instructions.
*Now* that I have set up the MBR partition table and the (FAT32) partition
on this USB stick using Gparted (and with the "boot" flag UNchecked in
Gparted), I _am_ able to see the USB stock in the BIOS Boot Priority
list.
>The following conditions are the ones that should give us the higher 
>chances to have your USB drive bootable:
>
>_ Standard MBR;
Check.  (GParted calls is "msdos" partitioning, but I'm sure they
mean MBR.)
>_ Only ONE partition;
Check.
>_ The partition formatted as FAT32;
Check.
>_ The partition is marked as "active" (AKA. "boot"able)
in the MBR.
See my other comments about this.  The "boot" flag in GParted is
UNchecked, which apparently actually means "bootable".
>Then you need to have the content of the Clonezilla Live ISO (or the 
>zip archive) expanded / extracted / copy (choose your favorite term) 
>in the FAT32 partition.
Yes.  I took the file clonezilla-live-2.2.1-22-amd64.zip, placed in onto
my Windows 7 system, and then had Windows itself open and then extract it
to D:\ which is/was the USB stick.
>Can you confirm this is the current situation?
With the above caveats, yes.
>Can Windows Explorer see this content?
Yes.
>Boot into your BIOS settings. Look for something similar to SATA or 
>IDE or NATIVE or AHCI mode. There might be more than one setting 
>regarding this mode(s). Is it set to something like "IDE
compatible",
>or "AHCI" or "RAID"? Please post your BIOS settings.
You could be a little more specific here.  I have no idea what you are
looking for specifically.  Onboard IDE 1 and 2 are enabled. SATA II RAID
is disabled.  SATA II 1 & 2 are enabled.  "Legacy USB storage
detect" is
enabled.
>In your BIOS, is the USB controller enabled? Is USB 2.0 enabled?
Yes.
>In your BIOS, is there some "onboard IDE controller" setting? Is
it
>enabled?
Yes.
>I am not asking to change any particular setting. I just want to 
>understand the current situation.
Yes, and I understand completely.  It is hard to debug something like
this without being physically present.

Please do try to remember hoever that ... as I said earlier... with all
my BIOS setting just as they are, I *was* in fact able to boot Windows 7
from USB... at least part way.  So it isn't as if my BIOS setting are
totally mangled, or else I wouldn't have been able to do that.
>With the USB drive connected, boot the system and use F12 during 
>POST. Can you still see your USB drive listed somewhere? Possibly 
>under HDD or under USB-HDD? Where is it listed?
Yes, it is listed under the Boot Priority list.
>We must regain the possibility to at least *potentially* boot to the 
>USB drive before attempting any additional instructions.
I agree, unfortunately, I must report that things have gone from bad
to worse, to MUCH worse.

Now, with all of the conditions described above in effect, now when I
try to boot to the USB stick my BIOS gets down to the point of printing:

	Boot from CD/DVD :

and then it just chokes, with the cursor blinking in column 1 of the next
following line.

This is with no other drives or sticks of any kind in the system... Just
the 4GB Transcend USB flash stick.
>Please use the above paragraphs / questions so to clarify the current 
>situation. According to your answers, we might know how to go on.
I await your further recommendations.  However this is not looking good
at all.  (And strangely, the more I do things that should cause it to work
better, the less far the booting process actually seems to get.)

Regards,
rfg

P.S.  I may perhaps try a different USB stick, try swaping main memory,
and perhaps even try swaping out my graphics card.  I use only good
quality name brand components, but you never know.

> 
> In message <BLU0-SMTP4359BC7EA366B1FB76EA9188BBF0 at phx.gbl>, 
> Ady <ady-sf at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >I am probably misunderstanding something. We seem to go backwards.
> 
> Yes, and ever moreso.
> 
> >"Something" changed. If you now cannot see your USB drive in
your
> >list (press F12 during POST), there is no point on redacting 
> >instructions.
> 
> *Now* that I have set up the MBR partition table and the (FAT32) partition
> on this USB stick using Gparted (and with the "boot" flag
UNchecked in
> Gparted), I _am_ able to see the USB stock in the BIOS Boot Priority
> list.
> 
> >The following conditions are the ones that should give us the higher 
> >chances to have your USB drive bootable:
> >
> >_ Standard MBR;
> 
> Check.  (GParted calls is "msdos" partitioning, but I'm sure
they mean MBR.)
> 
> >_ Only ONE partition;
> 
> Check.
> 
> >_ The partition formatted as FAT32;
> 
> Check.
> 
> >_ The partition is marked as "active" (AKA.
"boot"able) in the MBR.
> 
> See my other comments about this.  The "boot" flag in GParted is
> UNchecked, which apparently actually means "bootable".
> 
> >Then you need to have the content of the Clonezilla Live ISO (or the 
> >zip archive) expanded / extracted / copy (choose your favorite term) 
> >in the FAT32 partition.
> 
> Yes.  I took the file clonezilla-live-2.2.1-22-amd64.zip, placed in onto
> my Windows 7 system, and then had Windows itself open and then extract it
> to D:\ which is/was the USB stick.
> 
> >Can you confirm this is the current situation?
> 
> With the above caveats, yes.
> 
> >Can Windows Explorer see this content?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> >Boot into your BIOS settings. Look for something similar to SATA or 
> >IDE or NATIVE or AHCI mode. There might be more than one setting 
> >regarding this mode(s). Is it set to something like "IDE
compatible",
> >or "AHCI" or "RAID"? Please post your BIOS
settings.
> 
> You could be a little more specific here.  I have no idea what you are
> looking for specifically.  Onboard IDE 1 and 2 are enabled. SATA II RAID
> is disabled.  SATA II 1 & 2 are enabled.  "Legacy USB storage
detect" is
> enabled.
> 
> >In your BIOS, is the USB controller enabled? Is USB 2.0 enabled?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> >In your BIOS, is there some "onboard IDE controller" setting?
Is it
> >enabled?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> >I am not asking to change any particular setting. I just want to 
> >understand the current situation.
> 
> Yes, and I understand completely.  It is hard to debug something like
> this without being physically present.
> 
> Please do try to remember hoever that ... as I said earlier... with all
> my BIOS setting just as they are, I *was* in fact able to boot Windows 7
> from USB... at least part way.  So it isn't as if my BIOS setting are
> totally mangled, or else I wouldn't have been able to do that.
> 
> >With the USB drive connected, boot the system and use F12 during 
> >POST. Can you still see your USB drive listed somewhere? Possibly 
> >under HDD or under USB-HDD? Where is it listed?
> 
> Yes, it is listed under the Boot Priority list.
> 
> >We must regain the possibility to at least *potentially* boot to the 
> >USB drive before attempting any additional instructions.
> 
> I agree, unfortunately, I must report that things have gone from bad
> to worse, to MUCH worse.
> 
> Now, with all of the conditions described above in effect, now when I
> try to boot to the USB stick my BIOS gets down to the point of printing:
> 
> 	Boot from CD/DVD :
> 
> and then it just chokes, with the cursor blinking in column 1 of the next
> following line.
> 
> This is with no other drives or sticks of any kind in the system... Just
> the 4GB Transcend USB flash stick.
> 
> >Please use the above paragraphs / questions so to clarify the current 
> >situation. According to your answers, we might know how to go on.
> 
> I await your further recommendations.  However this is not looking good
> at all.  (And strangely, the more I do things that should cause it to work
> better, the less far the booting process actually seems to get.)
> 
> Regards,
> rfg
> 
> P.S.  I may perhaps try a different USB stick, try swaping main memory,
> and perhaps even try swaping out my graphics card.  I use only good
> quality name brand components, but you never know.
 
Are you using the same physical USB drive for all your tests with 
Clonezilla as well as with UBCD and others? If you are, then we have 
a problem, because each of those are using different (versions of) 
bootloaders, which makes it more difficult for us to solve the main 
issue.

Now, regarding the "active" flag (AKA. "boot"able
partition), only
one partition can have it, generally speaking. (There are other 
special cases, but they are not relevant for us).

Since you should have only one formatted partition, that partition 
should be marked as "boot"able ("active"). For our current
purpose,
this partition should be formatted as FAT32.

You should be seeing the content of the Clonezilla zip archive 
expanded in your USB drive. Assuming that Windows Explorer sees this 
partition as "d:", that means, for example:
d:\syslinux\syslinux.cfg
d:\utils\win32\syslinux64.exe

With the exception of the specific drive letter ("d:"), the above 
paths should be "exact". If you see something like:
d:\clonezilla-live-2.2.1-22-amd64\syslinux\syslinux.cfg
then that's not good for our purpose and you would need to correct it 
(and the rest of the Clonezilla paths).

Now, assuming that you have "d:\utils\win32\syslinux64.exe" in your 
USB drive together with the rest of the Clonezilla directories and 
files, let's try the following:

1_ Close all unnecessary programs, including Windows Explorer.

2_In Windows cmd prompt opened with "right-click -> Run as 
Administrator" (as instructed in some previous email in this same 
email thread), and assuming your USB drive is "d:" (change the drive 
letter accordingly in each of the following steps), type in:
d:
cd d:\utils\win32\
syslinux64.exe --mbr --active --directory /syslinux/ --install d:

3_ Once the previous command finishes, you should be back to the 
Windows cmd prompt. Type:
exit
so to close it.

4_ Shut down the system. Boot, use F12 during POST so to select the 
USB drive. Can you see the Clonezilla Live boot menu?

Regards,
Ady.

Ady, before responding to you further, I'll ask you now to take onje
more (fresh) look at this thread that I started over in the GParted
forums:

   http://gparted-forum.surf4.info/viewtopic.php?pid=31834

Please note that I have now followed-up on myself and that I have added
quite a lot of new & additional information.

It now appears to me that GParted's reporting of the status of the
per-partition "bootable" flags may have been right all along, *but*
if that is true, then the BIOS of my GA-M55Plus-S3G motherboard has
some *really* serious drain bamage, because if there is a mass storage
device connected to this motherboard via USB and if that device has
an MBR partition table and only one partition, and if the "bootable"
flags for that one partition, as reported by GParted, is *set*, then the
BIOS on this motherboard will, paradoxically, *not* see the drive in
question as bootable, and conversely, if the partiton's bootable flag
is *not* set, then in that case the BIOS *does* see the device as bootable.

This is clearly bass ackwards, but I have verified this several times
now, and I believe that the BIOS is just plain wrong, i.e. it is probably
the one that has things bass-ackwards.  (But this theory still fails to
explain how my main/regular hard drive for this same desktop system
came to have the bootable flag on the actual Win7 OS partition UN-set.
I can assure you that *I* never did anything to set it like that.  I did
however perform a totally plain vanilla install of Win7 ("retail"
version) onto this exact drive from an official MS Win7 CD not very
long ago.

Separately, having failed, utterly, to get anywhere when I tried to use
GParted to both (1) install an MBR record and to (2) create the one
FAT32 partition that we need, I decided to back up and try again to use
your recommended tool, RUFUS, instead, and see how far I could get with
that.

The results were enlightening.  I asked RUFUS to create for me a USB
stick which was bootable and which contained FreeDOS.  It obliged me.
I subsequently took the resulting USB stick and tried to boot it on
both my laptop and my small HTPC system.  In both cases it booted to
FreeDOS with no problem at all.  I then looked in detail at what RUFUS
had created for me, using GParted.  Of course, RUFUS had created a MBR
partition table, and that table, of course, contained only one entry.
It is the *flags* on that one RUFUS-created partition that I found
especially interesting.  According to GParted, the partition that RUFUS
created had two (and only two) partition flags set, i.e. the bootable
flag and the "LBA" flag.

Obviously, this is why my ill-advised efforts to create a bootable
USB stick, starting with GParted, failed.  I had no idea at that
time that I needed to set _both_ the bootable flag and the (non-
standard?) "LBA" flag.  But apparently both are vital.  Now I know.
(Actually, someone else in this thread mentioned "LBA" but I failed
to properly read those comments.  Sorry.)

In any case, I'm sure that you would like to know what happend when I
took my perfectly working perfectly bootable RUFUS-generated FreeDOS
USB stick and tried to boot it on my problematic GA-M55Plus-S3G system.
But you could easily predict what happened when I did this, based on
everything else I've already said.  Remember that RUFUS *does* set the
bootable flag and that, as I said already, my goofy motherboard refuses
to see a USB-connected device as being bootable if the device in question
contains a single partition that *does* have that flag set.

In short, that perfectly working RUFUS-generated bootable FreeDOS USB
stick that worked just fine on both my laptop and HTPC failed to boot
on my (desktop) GA-M55Plus-S3G system, because it had the bootable flag
set, and in all such cases, this motherboard doesn't even list such
things in its Boot Priority list.  It is like the device is not even
there at all!

(I am still in the process of exchanging e-mails with a tech support
guy @ Gigabyte, and you can bet your bottom dollar that I will be giving
him very much of a hard time about this.)

Anyway, that is the bottom line.  It appears to me that RUFUS isn't
even using SYSLINUX.  Is that correct?  Regardless of what it uses,
even it can't/won't generate a USB stick that this motherboard is
willing to boot, so that fact says to me that this really isn't even a
SYSLINUX problem... and I probably shouldn't have bothered any of you
folks with any of this.  My apologies.


Regards,
rfg


P.S.  Just for laughs, I did try taking that perfectly working RUFUS-
generated FreeDOS USB stick and (using GParted) UN-setting its bootable
flag, just so that I could try, one last time, to see if maybe that
was all that might be needed to entice the GA-M55Plus-S3G to boot from
it.  Then I tried again to boot the GA-M55Plus-S3G from the USB stick.
This also failed.  (The system freezes just after printing "Boot from
CD/DVD :") I believe that the reason most probably has something to do
with that LBA flag.  The BIOS on this brain damaged motherboard probably
doesn't properly understand that either.  (And actually, it appears,
based on my googling, that this LBA flag may not be "standardized" in
any meaningful sense anyway.  So maybe the motherboard isn't in any
sense obligated to do what RUFUS and/or GParted and/or anybody else
thinks ought to be done with that flag.)

Anyway, sorry, but I don't think that I want to work on this problem
any more.  It isn't fun and it just isn't worth my time.  It is more
cost effective for me to just replace the motherboard with something
sane... something that works, both with SYSLINUX and also with RUFUS-
created sticks.

If/when I do replace it, I'll be more than happy to ship it to you Ady,
or anybody else who desires to conduct further tests.