Boot from USB stick
The scenario is that you want to boot from a USB stick, for instance to troubleshoot the PC or simply (re-)install the PC.
In order to boot from a USB stick, it is necessary to make it bootable first. One of the easiest ways to boot from USB, is to prepare the USB stick with Ventoy and put the desired iso images on the stick. However, it is important to know that not every iso image is fit for Ventoy. A major advantage of Ventoy is, that it can handle as many iso images as fit on the stick.
If Ventoy is not supported by the iso image, under Windows you can for instance try Rufus, which should always work.
Recommendation: use a USB stick that supports boot, i.e. a known brand stick. Some cheap sticks that you may receive as a gadget somewhere simply are not recognized by the BIOS. Secondly, beware of gadgets that may contain malware.
In order to boot from the USB stick, press F8 or F12 (depending on the BIOS) at startup to get a boot option list and select the USB stick.
Should boot not work, try the following:
- Enter the BIOS and check if USB stick listed among the HDD. If so, select the USB stick as the first HDD.
- Turn off secure boot. Even if the bigger distributions can normally handle secure boot, boot from USB often cannot. See more about secure boot in the article on Bios settings.
- Select legacy BIOS boot (also called CSM boot) instead of UEFI boot.
- Check, if the USB stick supports boot, see remark in the box above.
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