Intel Motherboards : Z97 Extreme/6ac and booting external USB linux

Author: winstonsmith
Subject: Z97 Extreme/6ac and booting external USB linux
Posted: 13 Sep 2016 at 8:35pm

I'm having a problem with using Linux Mint on my desktop.

The motherboard is as in the title and using the latest bios. The usb hard drive is a WD 2 terabyte "My Passport Ultra" USB 3 drive.

The motherboard is not secure boot enabled.

OK- I tried to install Mint and the system hung once or twice so I went to my Asus laptop (which has secure boot enabled if that matters) and the process was painless. I'm using it now in Mint.

If I go back to the desktop and connect the WD it boots into windows 10 if I hit F11 for the boot menu on the WD drive. No joy.

I then went into the BIOS and set the WD to first boot device- booted into W10. disabled all drives in the boot order but the WD. Booted into W10. I then went into the USB HDD menu and moved the WD to the top. Booted into W10.

I then went into the SATA HDD menu and disabled everything. This time it didn't boot into W10 because there was only the WD drive showing in anything.  The system wanted a bootable drive.

I'm out of ideas. Any ideas?