Mobo won't boot from Unraid USB... will boot from other USB distros?


perfect

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Hello all!

 

I'm facing a frustrating challenge towards getting Unraid 6.8.3 installed on my Gigabyte motherboard.  I cannot get my Unraid USB to actually install anything after the BIOS post.  At first I was convinced that this was an issue with Gigabyte motherboards (there are countless threads out there related to this exact topic)...

 

However, I have no problem using the same USB drive that has any other Windows and Linux distro on it.  My computer is definitely recognizing the USB - but doesn't ever actually start the installation after being found. 

 

I've read from some users that they used Rufus to write to their USB drive (and enabled the "Legacy / OLD Bios" support options... but I can't figure out how to use Rufus to accomplish this.  It doesn't look like Unraid has an .iso option...?  Is there another way to get Rufus to work for this?

 

I'm now confident that my computer can, in fact, boot from USB... it just doesn't like the Unraid installation? 

 

I'm trying to install Unraid 6.8.3 using the Unraid USB Flash Creator (v1.6).  I am NOT selecting the UEFI option (as my mobo doesn't support this).  I'm writing to a Samsung 32GB USB and the write portion is deemed successful.

 

Is there something that I need to modify with the installer files on the USB stick?

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Another update...

 

I tried using the manual method as outlined in the documentation (wiki) and was still not successful after following the steps. 

 

My computer is definitely recognizing the USB drive and attempting to find something bootable.  If I don't plug in any USB it will bark at me after a few seconds that NO BOOT MANAGER FOUND... (or something to that affect).  With the USB in place, it just sits there trying to do something but never does.

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Frank - I tried both ways (it was originally EFI- so I renamed it to just EFI and it still didn't boot.

 

Note - I'm also trying all of my USBs (5 of them) with a different machine and it still doesn't work.  THIS IS NOT A BOOTABLE DISK.  PLEASE INSERT A BOOTABLE FLOPPY AND PRESS ANY KEY...

 

I can't win 😞

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OK, that is a very old board (~2008)  and (from the posts) it was used by a lot of folks to run Unraid. 

 

Since you tried (at least) one of the Flash drives in another computer and it still wouldn't boot, you have a problem creating a proper boot drive.

 

When you did the manual method, you did open the drive in Windows Explorer, navigate to the flash drive, right click on the   make_bootable.bat   file and run as Administrator?  You should have seen a screen like this appear:

 

image.png.07c76455b774abc80bd4372a3212d984.png

 

Notice that the Volume name is   UNRAID   in this screen capture!!!  Make sure that this exact name (including CAPITALIZATION) appears when you run the command!

 

One more question.  Were all of the flash drives basically the same manufacturer and model? 

 

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Frank,

 

Thanks very much for the support.  At this time, I ended up just using a different computer (mobo+CPU) since I was tired of fighting the Gigabyte/Athlon combo.  I now successfully Unraid installed (albeit, not on the computer I originally intended).  It is still strange why the boot sequence never initiated, but would for any other USB boot drive I tried to install.  The new computer booted up with all of the USB drives correctly, so I'm still not convinced it was an issue on my end (but I'm a newbie, so who knows?!). 

 

I do believe that I followed the manual method correctly, but I don't remember specifically (I tried and tested quite a few different combinations). 

 

I had a variety of different USB drives - Kingston, Samsung, Sandisk, and some other generic varieties. 

 

Thanks again for the help!  I'm happily running Unraid and diving into all of the quirks and features!!

 

 

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