Hi. I'd really appreciate some help getting unraid to boot/install. When I boot up I get a black screen saying reboot and select proper boot device. When setting usb to forced FDD I just get a flashing white text marker thing on the left of the screen. I left it like that for 20 minutes just in case but nothing happened.

 

My assumption is either I haven't successfully made the usb bootable, or messed up with setting the usb as the bot drive in bios, but I have checked the BIOS A LOT and can't see anything wrong. I've made sure to run the make_bootable as admin every time.

 

My hardware is motherboard: Gigabyte H97N-WIFI, flash drive: SanDisk Ultra Fit 16 GB (after looking at the forums I believe both should work?).

 

Things I've tried after looking at the forums:

Made sure to unzip the files to a folder before copying onto the flash drive - no change

formatted drive as both FAT32 and FAT - no change

usb as hdd (and each of the other options) just in case -  "Reboot and select proper boot device"

I've tried each of the 3 download options available on the site - no change

A bunch of bios options, turning fast boot on/off, any option I can find about usb, SATA was already ahci - no change

have put the flash drive in every usb port, some usb 3, some 2 - no change

run the make_bootable on windows 10 and 7 - no change

flash drive has no U3 software or anything else on it, and OS language is english

running makebootable from cmd prompt - no change

 

Thing is, I know this motherboard should boot from this usb as a few weeks ago I was running freenas on it, but after a little research decided unraid would suit me better (no ecc ram). This makes me assume it's the usb not being made bootable properly, but I don't know what to do next. Cheers.

make sure your bios is not set to boot "uefi usb device"  as the unraid usb will not boot from this mode.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I just checked the BIOS was booting from SanDisk not UEFI:SanDisk, and there was no change.

The USB stick needs to be formatted as FAT32.  Also when running the make_bootable.bat file it should be run as Administrator.

Thanks itimpi but that's what I've been doing and it isn't working - I still get a black screen with a flashing white dash in the top left as if it is waiting for text input but none comes, and the keyboard doesn't do anything (beyond ctrl-alt-del restarting).

I would try manually setting the boot order at boot time (usually F12) and then selecting from there as a start

 

And when you find what actually boots it properly, set that to be the FIRST device in the boot order and ideally (if you can) disable all other boot devices

Make sure the name of flashdrive is set to UNRAID else it will not boot aswell.

The name is set to UNRAID, formatted FAT32, make_bootable run as administrator.

 

I have disabled all boot devices apart from SanDisk, so using F12 only SanDisk is available as an option (well that and enter setup), but it still stops at the same point. Just to test I re-enabled and tried with the UEFI:SanDisk but same result (so I've disabled that again now).

make sure the partition type on the usb stick is masterboot record not gpt

Just look at the manual for your board. I would plug the usb into the usb ports on left above the ps2 keyboard mouse socket as they are usb 2.0 contoller not 3.0 and some boards have trouble booting from a usb 3.0

 

set first boot option 1    sandisk

fastboot                        disabled

windows 8                    other os

 

USB Support

Disabled All USB devices are disabled before the OS boot process completes.

Full Initial All USB devices are functional in the operating system and during the POST.        *******use this setting********

Partial Initial Part of the USB devices are disabled before the OS boot process completes

 

Boot Mode Selection

Allows you to select which type of operating system to boot.

UEFI and Legacy Allows booting from operating systems that support legacy option ROM or UEFI

option ROM. (Default)    *****************make sure this is set********

Legacy Only Allows booting from operating systems that only support legacy Option ROM.

UEFI Only Allows booting from operating systems that only support UEFI Option ROM.

 

Other than that all i can suggest is to try a different usb stick.

 

 

 

Thanks for your detailed help gridrunner. I've checked disk management and the usb is mbr. The bios settings are already set like that, the USB support one is only visible when fast boot is enabled, but I tried it both enabled and disabled and there was no change. I've tried it in both the usb2 ports, and still the same.

 

I was thinking I'd have to try with another stick, but was trying to avoid that as I don't really want to buy another stick if that still might not work. Thanks for trying anyway.