[syslinux] USB boot problems on Gigabyte GA-M55Plus-S3G

Warren Block
Fri, 17 Jan 2014 17:06:59 -0000

On Fri, 17 Jan 2014, Ady wrote:

> Regarding your question about what I did with the test.img (which
> might be of interest to others), I just took your own reports and
> avoided the potential problems as much as I could.
>
> By using "altmbr.bin" (included in Syslinux), we don't have
to care
> about the "active" flag (I am avoiding the technical details
about
> how to use it). There is no partition flagged as "active".
>
> I also "forced" a FAT32 LBA filesystem, although normally a
partition
> of 700MB would not require such conditions. The potential influence
> of a "not-nice" (in the eyes of this BIOS) CHS set of values
might,
> perhaps, be *slightly* reduced by using the LBA code. I used FAT32
> (instead of other filesystem) because of your previous reports, and
> because it would be a match when using partitions bigger than my
> 700MB test.
>
> I also forced the *same* "most-standard" CHS values, Nx255x63, on
> both, the MBR and the VBR of the FAT32 partition.
>
> I left no space for any other partitions by ending the first-and-only
> partition at the very end of the image.
>
> I used a partition starting offset of 2048 sectors and I took care
> that the partition table in the MBR and the VBR would use correct
> matching values.

Could that be a problem with a very strict BIOS implementation?  It's
not an even multiple of CHS values, like 2079.

(I have not been following this thread too closely, so may have missed
some details.)