Hello, I am attempting to install Elementary OS on my laptop, but every time I try to boot up the live usb I get an error stating (initramfs) unable to find a medium containing a live file system.
After searching around online for a bit the issue seems to be caused by booting up through a usb 3.0 port, and the solution is to use a usb 2.0 port instead. My issue is that my laptop only has usb type-c ports and currently I am using an adapter to plug in the usb containing the os.
Since I cannot use a usb 2.0 port I'm not entirely sure how to get around this, I have already tried a number of things such as disabling secure boot and enabling legacy support but nothing has worked so far. Is there anything I can do to try and fix this?
Is the device(usb-stick/external drive) from which you boot USB 3.0 or USB 2.0?
Here, in the comments of the answer the guy did not have an option to boot through a usb2.0 port but switched to a USB 2.0 device and got it running. So maybe if you adapt the USB-C port to a USB A and then pug in a USB 2.0 stick from which you boot, it might work.
I have tried booting from two usb devices, both of which were usb 2.0. I would try using a usb 3.0 for the sake of trying but I do not currently have one on hand. Either way unfortunately using a usb 2.0 device did not solve the issue.
Aren't there any particular UEFI options relating to this. I don't know Elementary OS, but if Secure Boot is active and Elementary OS doesn't use the Fedora shim to pry open the Secure Boot on that machine, it might not allow the system to find the bootable linux volume. Normally, in UEFI, you can designate a volume as trusted for bootup. Or disable Secure Boot for install is another option.
I'm not sure about designating a trusted volume for booting, but I have already tried disabling Secure Boot and enabling legacy support, and I assume that should of worked if that was the problem, although I could be wrong.
There's a chance you need to allow it separately anyway because of how TPM works is you have a discrete TPM chip. I don't have a machine with only USB C, so I really never encountered the problem, and Mac users I know seem to stay away from the new machines with only one connector, so I really have no idea about the UEFI options if any, and SB and TPM options in a UEFI are so complex and layered, that it would not be good to respond to even a description of what options are offered, so it's a situation in which it's very hard to help. Can't you contact the OEM support or something and ask how to start from a Windows or Mac recovery USB, because it's usually the same for Linux.
There was someone else on here that had the same problem you are having. I will try and find that post. There were many different solutions in that thread. The one that worked for him was using a different sub stick, which is something I see that you already tried.
Going through the bios it doesn't seem like there are a whole lot of options, and as far as contacting the OEM support I would prefer to avoid doing so if possible, at least for now.
I will point out that technically the system is booting up since it's making it to grub and the Elementary OS boot screen, right after that is when the error occurs.
Also since the error is from initramfs, if I use an install iso such as Ubuntu Minimal which does not load up a live desktop environment I might be able to get around the error, unfortunately Elementary OS does not have a minimal iso like that, and preferably I do want Elementary.
The fact that the system is somewhat booting up, and that It might work if it did not have a live desktop environment both lead me to believe that the issue is not necessarily UEFI related.
I did have a quick look for similar posts before posting to make sure I was not creating a duplicate, and I did not see anything similar, but if you could find something that would be great.
It took me a little while to find, I was expecting the title to be like yours.
Ignore my post where I say that the OS was installed but not correctly. I misunderstood, it was not installed because he could not install it because every time he tried to boot into the installer via usb he got that message.
Thanks for finding the post, this is pretty recent, I feel kinda bad for not looking hard enough and creating a duplicate, Although I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to solve it the same way he did.
Ill see if I have some other usb devices lying around and give them a shot, but since I've already tried two I feel like its unlikely that it's going to work.
Its cool. There are lots of duplicate posts on here. We have a very stringent policy on necro and stuff. ( That strict part was a joke. We are very nice here )
Personally tho, I think that it may be the adapter. Or unless the two USB's you tried already are really bad at their job and a third one were to work.
Ok I have tried even more usb devices and still no success. You may be right that it is the adapter but I'm not entirely sure what else I could use, I might try getting an external usb cd/dvd drive to see if I can get it to work that way.
Last time I had similar issue i only managed to install Linux using a DVD. But i still had to play with the grub options to make it work...I would definitely try with a DVD.
To write to the usb sticks I have used both UNetbootin and Universal USB Installer, each of them seemed to be working correctly, but I still tried both anyway, just to make sure one of them was not the issue.
Try SuSE Studio ImageWriter, UNetbootin has always been crap lol
I always forget that it's so hard to reliably write an image to a USB stick in Windows. As a linux user, you tend to forget those kind of problems, in linux it's just a simple dd command. The problem is most likely to be that the USB was not written as it should.