Monday, March 11, 2013

Linux Mint 14 error “unable to find a medium containing a live file system”

I have a home PC (aka old work laptop I bought) and was previously running Windows 8 consumer preview on it. Naturally, when I finally booted it up again since November 2012, the preview expired. Rather than buy Windows 8 home or pro, I wanted to switch over to try out Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon. Nothing I like better than Mint and Cinnamon...

The install manuals all talked about burning the ISO to a DVD for booting. It didn't really mention anything about using a USB device to boot from. I did this using 'ISO to USB' but wasn't able to boot from it when the system was restarted despite re-prioritizing the boot order in the BIOS. I then decided to open the directory in the expired Windows 8 system and run the 'mint4win.exe' in the USB. I selected 'Demo and full install' and 'Help me boot from CD'. I then followed the prompts to restart the system.

When the system was restarting, Linux went into its thing but ultimately gave me the error “unable to find a medium containing a live file system”. That was fun. Everything I was reading online mentioned that the install files must've been corrupted or something and I needed to verify the hash using the MD5SUM program, re-burn the DVD at a slower pace, re-download the iso, etc. I tend to not think things like these are the issues and that's a lot of pain in the ass for me... I tried a few things without success until I hit something that worked: 

Resolution: I switched the USB to a different USB port and things worked. Looking a little deeper in the Linux boards, this can happen when using USB 3.0 vs 2.0 for the boot. The only issue is that I don't have any USB 3.0 ports. Mine are all 2.0 but instead of using the ones on the right hand side of my computer, I used the ones in the back.

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