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Atm, my Ubuntu 18.10 distribution is burning. I can not install any packages as I wrecked the apt part, and many programs are either broken or not installed correctly. Thus, I figured the easiest solution would do a clean install of Ubuntu 20.10. Here is a screenshot with more details

enter image description here

As I do not have an LTS version directly upgrading did not work, I tried a few hacks to make it work, and it was probably this that broke my apt. After some work, I was able to create a bootable USB stick with the 20.10 LTS ISO of Ubuntu. I did it as follows

sudo umount /dev/sda1

sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1


sudo dd bs=4M if=PATH/ubuntu-20.04-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sda1 status=progress oflag=sync

However, when trying to boot it, I only receive the following message:

The selected boot device failed. Press <Enter> to continue.

I must reiterate I can see the USB fine in my filesystem. I also have no problems writing to it. Yet, booting from it fails. What I've tried so far:

  • Disable fast boot in Windows
  • Disable Secure Boot in the BIOS settings
  • Searched for an option to enable Legacy booting, and enabled it
  • Used two different USB drives
  • Formated the USB to FAT32
  • Tried using both USB ports (one on each side) on my computer.
  • Also tried "Kubuntu" (also 20.10).
  • On my work computer, an HP Probook both USB's boot fine, whether it was Kubuntu Or Ubuntu.

None of these helped me:

Do you have any idea why the USB won't boot or what can be done about it? The USB seems fine as I can boot from it from another machine, however, I have no idea why I suddenly can not boot from my XPS 15.

N3buchadnezzar
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  • Use sdX without the number at the end. You don't need to care about any partitions on the pendrive (no FAT or anything). Also, is the PATH a real path? Just to add, Ubuntu 18.10 is no longer supported that's the reason you cannot install packages. – lev258 Jul 02 '20 at 08:42
  • @lev258 Why would this matter? I am not saying it does not. But as I said the USB boots fine on other machines. Thus, I doubt I have created the live ISO incorrectly. I just changed it to PATH in the post, when creating it I used the actual location of the ISO file. – N3buchadnezzar Jul 02 '20 at 09:05
  • When you use dd on a disk, it will create partitions according to the ISO. If I remember right, Ubuntu ISO makes at least two. I don't know the reason but it might be related to being able to do Legacy and UEFI capable boot (both of them). If you force it on a definite partition (sda1) it probably won't be able to make things ideal. – lev258 Jul 02 '20 at 09:10
  • Your ddcommand seems odd. /dev/sda is the first disk in the computer, normally an interior disk. Are you sure that your USB is mounted as /dev/sda? What other disks/SSDs are connected? – Serafim Jul 02 '20 at 09:49
  • Possible duplicate of What is the proper way of creating installation media from Ubuntu iso? and Why Doesn't a Bootable USB Boot – karel Jul 02 '20 at 10:10

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