As the title says, my bootable usb is not showing up in the boot menu for my ThinkPad e14 AMD ryzen 5 7530u , gen 5 I think. I have disabled secure boot in the uefi and disabled fast startup in windows. Am I missing anything ? Note: this is my first time using a uefi bios so I don’t know if there are any other kinks to mess with .
Edit : I contacted lenovo support for the above issue but even they couldn’t find the answer so I guess won’t be using linux for this laptop. But since it’s for uni I guess it’s fine. I will just use WSL
Edit 2: Reinstalled the bios , the usb boots now . Finally slapped opensuse on it and now running it
What’s on the USB? Are you sure it’s properly formatted for EFI booting? Did you make sure it it’s actually working when plugged in on another machine?
I tried ventoy with mbr then ventoy with gpt then balenaetcher and Rufus with gpt and then finally a windows usb through the media creation tool. None of them worked. It’s fine with my old laptop but since it was a legacy boot I am not so sure.
Can usb ports die if you can transfer files through it ?. The bios is also what I thought so iam lost with that.
did you try and press F1 at the logo screen after power on and adjust settings in the UEFI BIOS Config, Security and Startup menus?
Only disabled secure boot and tried enabled secure boot with 3rd party Microsoft ca
You should try enabling the options in:
- Startup>Boot>Boot device List F12 Option (most important)
- Config>USB (may be only for charging, but may also help)
- Security>I/O Port Access>USB Port (may be only for keyboard/mouse, but not clear)
and disable:
- Startup>Boot>Boot Order Lock (imporrant)
then Restart>Exit Saving Changes and press F12 furiously during next boot (as i don’t know when exactly) and select USB.
I have basically the same laptop (it’s an E16, but with the same CPU - it’s just the 16-inch version of your laptop). Make sure you press enter, press F1 to go into BIOS, then go into Security > Secure Boot and enable “Allow Microsoft 3rd Party CA”. That worked like a charm for me.
If you’re still having problems, try writing down the steps you have taken (down to the key combinations; some pictures would be nice as well). I should have all the same settings menus.
Don’t worry, though, you’ve made a good choice; I’ve been loving my Thinkpad E16.
Weird. What distro is on it, what program did you flash it with, and does it show up in the file manager on another machine?
The first was the ventoy one with mbr which I was fine other machines I have used it before with. It had like endeavour os , opensuse, pop os , linux mint windows 11 etc…
But I also reformatted it with windows 11 from meda creation tool as well to check but that also doesnt work which is the most strangest part
I suggest a few more things:
Try a different brand usb. Different motherboards sometimes don’t support some usb brands. In fact, a Lenovo server I rebuilt refused to boot off certain usbs.
Some motherboards don’t initialise boot off some usb ports. Sometimes the additional ports are on another controller and initialise too slow.
Just try a straight working Ubuntu live boot usb to remove any ventoy from equation. Ubuntu has real signed uefi (and no shim) granted by Microsoft. I think that’s how it works, uefi is a mess.
Try to start isolating all the different factors, and there could be more. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything definitive if it works on another machine.
Tried right now with a SanDisk with just Ubuntu using Rufus but that also does not show up
And you probably confirmed that live boot worked too I assume.
In the actual bios, can you see a boot order and see uefi for Windows/whatever is on your internal disk? But not any other entries?
Some uefi set ups have usb boot disabled by default. It may be worth having a poke around and seeing if yours does.
The only other thing I can think of is, are you absolutely sure the key is the right type, efi or mbr, depending on how you’re booting?
