[GTALUG] Toshiba Satellite L500 rejects Linux

[Giles Orr]

Hi Don.

Probably a good suggestion, but I don't think it will work for me: the
Toshiba in question does have an optical drive, but even if I can find
a CD burner, I'm not sure I have media I can burn to anymore (I have a
stack of blank CDs ... but they're 15+ years old).

On Mon, 22 May 2023 at 08:38, Don Tai <dontai.canada at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> When I find an old computer that won't boot USB I go back to a 32 bit CD install, then upgrade. Some old PCs simply won't reliably boot with USB.
>
> On Mon, 22 May 2023 at 08:34, Giles Orr via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>>
>> I've recently acquired (through a friend who stopped using it) a
>> Toshiba Satellite L500 - Core i3 (3rd gen?), 4G RAM.  I'm determined
>> to get Linux onto it (preferably Debian).  I thought I had succeeded:
>> I booted from a Debian USB stick, installed to the HD.  All appeared
>> to go well, but the system won't boot.  It returns to the Boot Menu
>> and says "HDXXXX has failed."  What the search engines are telling me
>> is that with this generation of Toshibas, the problem is generally
>> Secure Boot / CSM etc.  Which makes sense, but ... there is absolutely
>> zero mention in the BIOS/UEFI ("Phoenix SecureCore Tiano Setup") of
>> "Secure Boot," "CSM," "Legacy," or "UEFI."  Acccording to notes I
>> found online, "SecureCore Tiano" has "full support" for legacy
>> booting.
>>
>> Another issue with this machine is my mixed success booting from USB
>> sticks: I have an old-ish USB stick I built myself that has GRUB and a
>> large menu of ISOs: works great on most systems, won't boot on this
>> thing - probably because it's an old-style BIOS-boot only(?).
>>
>> One of my ideas was to upgrade the BIOS: it appears there's a newer
>> version available, but it's NOT available from Toshiba, which is the
>> only place I'd want to download it from.  The rest look like dubious
>> secondary download sites (if you know one you consider reliable, let
>> me know).
>>
>> What I read online said that Fedora's installer puts an EFI partition
>> on the HD as part of the install, while Debian doesn't.  And that
>> may(?) be why I can't boot from my Debian install?  So ... I
>> downloaded the Fedora installer, put it on a USB stick ... and no joy:
>> the Toshiba doesn't recognize the Fedora USB stick as a bootable item.
>> Would this be because I burned it on a "Legacy" system?  Is there a
>> fix for that?  Except ... I'm about 99% sure the Debian Installer USB
>> stick was created on the same machine.
>>
>> Worst case, I can stick the HD from the Toshiba into another machine,
>> install Fedora on it, repartition to make room for Debian, put the HD
>> back into the Toshiba ... but that's getting damn complicated and
>> annoying.
>>
>> As always - any suggestions welcomed.

-- 
Giles
https://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr at gmail.com