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Solved Unable to boot from USB device (Linux Mint 17)

rumog

New Member
I've gone through a bunch of resources online to figure out how to install Mint 17 Cinnamon along side Win10 on the surface book. From what I can tell it should be possible without major issues (outside of probably touch screen compatibility and maybe some other driver issues). I've been unable to get to the point of installation though as no matter what I do the Surface Book seems to boot into windows.

Here is what I've tried so far: -Shrink C: drive to create empty 60GB partition -DL 64bit Mint 17.2 Cinnamon iso -Create bootable USB drive using Universal USB Installer – Easy as 1 2 3 | USB Pen Drive Linux All appears to have been successful -Boot into UEFI menu, change boot order so that USB device is the first option -Also attempted to turn off secureboot although from what I've read Mint is secureboot compatible and this should not be needed -Tried doing the 'swipe left to immediately boot from this device' in the UEFI menu for usb device. restarted and still booted Win10

Also tried some random other stuff like holding shift which I read somewhere. Nothing seems to work. I tried a 2nd download of the iso image in case it was corrupt, but had the same issue.

One other thing to note- I formatted the USB drive as NTFS. Originally I fomatted it as exFAT per the instructions I saw, but the universal usb installer would always fail and give a generic message that there was a failure and the drive wouldn't be bootable. From looking online formatting as NTFS solved this for people and they were still able to boot the drive successfuly, and this worked for me as well.
 
OP
R

rumog

New Member
That did it :) It's not recognizing either the mouse or keyboard on the surface book, although it does recognize usb keyboard. Guess there might be more driver issues than I thought.

Thanks!
 

jono

New Member
That did it :) It's not recognizing either the mouse or keyboard on the surface book, although it does recognize usb keyboard. Guess there might be more driver issues than I thought.

Thanks!
Any update on what works and what doesn't? I've seen plenty of reports of the Surface Pro 3 working under Linux, but not the Surface book.
 

bdyetton

New Member
Hi, I have the Microsoft Surface w. Performace base. I am also trying to boot from USB to install Ubuntu. I have followed all the same instructions as OP (change boot order, turn off secure boot, created bootable USB), and also have the drive formatted as FAT32. It will not boot from USB however, and just goes into windows everytime. Not that the bootable USB is correctly formatted, because it boots fine in my old windows computer.
Help appreciated!
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
Hi, I have the Microsoft Surface w. Performace base. I am also trying to boot from USB to install Ubuntu. I have followed all the same instructions as OP (change boot order, turn off secure boot, created bootable USB), and also have the drive formatted as FAT32. It will not boot from USB however, and just goes into windows everytime. Not that the bootable USB is correctly formatted, because it boots fine in my old windows computer.
Help appreciated!
You need a UEFI class 3 compliant boot loader because there's no support for mbr or legacy boot.
 
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