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Someone please help this has been driving me mad!

I've tried everything I can think of to get this to boot. I've followed many tutorials online, but nothing works. I've updated the BIOS to the latest (needed doing anyway - even though it's a brand new machine). Whatever I try, it just won't see the USB stick as a boot device. I have tried setting Fastboot in the BIOS. I have tried enable legacy option ROM. I have tried all three boot options - legacy, secure ON and secure OFF. I have tried Enable thunderbolt Boot Support. I have tried putting the USB stick into the right hand side port (obviously through an adapter, as it's USB A and the port is USB C).

The only thing I haven't tried (yet) is using a different USB stick, as this is the only one I have handy. I have bought dozens of the little blighters over the years, but they have all "flown the nest".

Any suggestions? I'm really looking forward to going back to Ubuntu instead of Windows, but I'm stuck with MS for the time being. This is not good for docker and kubernetes work.

The USB never comes up as an option to boot from, although I can boot from the NIC (in TCPv4 and v6) from the floppy drive? and from the Windows Boot Manager.

I'm getting really good at hitting F12 (twice?) at just the right time. F2 never seems to do anything.

Steve Button
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1 Answers1

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Fixed it. I went out today and bought a new USB C stick, and it's booting from that just fine. I don't know if it's because the other one was a USB A going through an adapter, or was just a "dodgy" stick. I had tried burning the old one a couple of times, with Ubuntu 19.04 and 18.04 but it was having none of it, so I don't think I was doing anything wrong originally.

Interestingly, using 19.04 it booted just fine even with secure boot enabled.

It refused to partition the disk once it was booted, but that's a separate problem. I think I'll need to take RAID off and use AHCI instead, which means I'll need to re-install Windows as well.

Steve Button
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  • You do not have to reinstall Windows but add the AHCI driver. https://askubuntu.com/questions/867488/dell-xps-13-9360-dualboot-windows-10-and-ubuntu-16-04?noredirect=1#comment1344306_867488 – oldfred Jun 14 '19 at 14:45
  • Thanks for the clue. I tried 2 of the same USB sticks and my XPS-13 didn't see them so after reading your solution, I switched to another USB and my system could see it. Time to buy another brand of USB stick today. – Mugsy Mar 21 '21 at 11:25