Install USBs won't install GRUB on old notebook, and Live USBs won't b

new2q4 · 2026-03-13 10:09

I guess I'm really at my wits' end about this.

For almost a week, I've spent a lot of time trying to get some version of Linus running on an almost ten year old notebook of mine that was already very low-spec at the time when it was made. I had always assumed that it was 32 bit, and at first, for a while I tried to use 32 bit versions of some distros on it. Most of those wouldn't do anything at all, and the few that I could install were buggy to the point of complete uselessness. I started a thread about that here: [*X*X::*X] (EDIT: slams forehead: When I wrote this post, that was supposed to be a placeholder for the link to the thread in question. But I forgot about this when I was done writing. So, the thread is at: https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5984)

Then, during various diagnostics, I discovered that I had been wrong all the time and it's actually 64 bit. Could that explain the bugs that showed up when I tried to use 32 bit distros on it? In any case, now the problem is that Q4OS installation USB drives end with an error message when they try to install GRUB, and Q4OS live USB drives won't boot at all.

Let me try to explain it step by step:

The notebook is a Medion Akoya E2216T MD99940. Here's some inxi output that I managed to get from the command line of a 32 bit installation that would only let me use the root command line in recovery mode:

Machine:
Type: Portable System: MEDION product: E2216T MD99940 v: N/A serial: <filter>
Mobo: MEDION model: NT16H v: 1.0 serial: <filter> UEFI: American Megatrends v: 5.11
date: 07/31/2016
Battery:
ID-1: axp288_fuel_gauge charge: 100% condition: N/A volts: 4.3 min: N/A model: N/A status: full
CPU:
Info: quad core model: Intel Atom x5-Z8350 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Airmont rev: 4 cache:
L1: 224 KiB L2: 2 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 480 min/max: 480/1920 cores: 1: 480 2: 480 3: 480 4: 480 bogomips: 11520
Flags: ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Integrated Graphics
driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-8 bus-ID: 00:02.0
Device-2: Silicon Motion - Taiwan (formerly Feiya ) 300k Pixel Camera type: USB
driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-4:3
Display: server: X.org v: 1.21.1.7 driver: X: loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa
dri: crocus gpu: i915 tty: 240x67 resolution: 1920x1080
API: OpenGL Message: GL data unavailable in console for root.
Audio:
Device-1: Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series Imaging Unit
driver: intel_atomisp2_pm v: kernel bus-ID: 00:03.0
API: ALSA v: k6.1.0-43-686 status: kernel-api
Server-1: PulseAudio v: 16.1 status: off
Network:
Device-1: Intel Wireless 3165 driver: N/A bus-ID: 01:00.0
Bluetooth:
Device-1: Intel Bluetooth wireless interface type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 1-2.1:4
Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 2.1 lmp-v: 4.2
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 58.24 GiB used: 15.61 GiB (26.8%)
ID-1: /dev/mmcblk2 vendor: Toshiba model: 064G38 size: 58.24 GiB

[...]

Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 48.0 C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
Processes: 150 Uptime: 4m Memory: 1.85 GiB used: 302.8 MiB (16.0%) Init: systemd Compilers: N/A
Packages: 2772 Shell: Bash v: 5.2.15 inxi: 3.3.26

I'm completely baffled about whether the initial bootstrap software is a BIOS or an UEFI. As you can see, inxi describes it as an UEFI. But the specific software name is "American Megatrends v: 5.11" and a web search seems to indicate that that's a BIOS. The software's own menus sometimes use the terms "EFI" and "UEFI", but when it shows USB drives as devices from which it might try to boot, it always shows the main installation partitions, never the EFI partitions.

As you can see, its specs make it unsuited for most distros still maintained today- a bit less than 2 GB RAM and slower than 2 GHz CPUs. According to Memtest, whatever the problem is, it's probably not the RAM, which appears to be fine. Also, back when I had Windows (10) on it, it was slow but worked, so I'm not sure why any possible hardware problems didn't show up back then. Windows updates on it routinely took hours, though (and I mean that literally, not as a figure of speech), which is one of the reasons why I wanted to switch it to Linux in the first place.

Since I started to try out low-requirement 64 bit distros on it, my experience has been that most wouldn't boot at all, a few would show the welcome screen but hang up not too long later, and only the Q4OS Aquarius installer gets anywhere at all. But it always ends up telling me that it failed to install a specific GRUB component to "<target>", without ever telling me what "<target>" is.

After some initial web research, mostly here, I thought the problem might be that the notebook's hard drive is an SD card. But the same problem remains when I try to use one USB drive to install Aquarius on a second USB drive plugged into the notebook.

My research got me to some posts where people talked about how they had solves similar problems, but the solutions always involved what appear to be specific command line instructions, and I haven't found any point in the installation process of the Aquarius installation media installer where I can enter command line instructions.

I thought I might try to put GRUB into the MBR, but apparently that can only be done in the installer on the live media, not in the installer on the installation media. Which brings me to the other main problem:

I can get the Aquarius installation version to boot on the notebook, but neither the Andromeda installation version nor any live version.

Let's rule out possible reasons one by one:

It's not that the notebook generally won't boot from USB. As I said, some USB images do boot from it. That indicates that I'm not simply to clueless to make a bootable USB drive from an image, either.

It's not about the boot order, or the notebook not recognizing the USB drives. They show up in the part of the BIOS/USB/whatever menus that allow me to set boot order, and also in the menu that allows me to bypass the boot order and go straight to a specific medium. When I do that, the screen flickers very briefly, and then I'm back where I was.

It's not anything physical about the USB drives. They work fine when I put the installation version of Aquarius on them.

As if all this wasn't already weird enough, I have the impression that the notebook will usually boot USB drives made from images that are smaller than 1 GB, but won't boot USB drives made from images that are larger than 1 GB. Could that be a thing? For a while, I tried customizing isos with mkusb, but that didn't help me, either.

I tried using Super Grub 2, but while that boots itself, it hangs up whenever I tell it to look for boot candidates.

So, long story short, I don't know what to do.I should mention that as a result of all that, the notebook has no working OS right now, which makes additional diagnostics difficult. I could just give up, but if you don't count my cellphone, that notebook is the only computer I currently own which is physically convenient to carry around with me, which might make it useful if I could get it to work.

If you don't mind me adding a personal note,in all my time using computers, this is the strangest collection of problems I've ever run into, and that's saying something.

Sorry about that giant wall of text, but I couldn't really make it any shorter. Perhaps if I'm lucky, someone might have ideas while I'm at the dentist.

Last edited by new2q4 (2026-03-13 22:09)

hchiper · 2026-03-13 11:30

AI helped to find this. The Intel Atom x5-Z8350 is an x86-64 processor (64-bit). Nevertheless most laptop manufacturers include it with a 32-bit BIOS/UEFI. This is called "Mixed Mode". It is compatible with Debian, but to install Debian the "multi-arch" (32 & 64 bits) iso image is needed.

Good news from AI, since Q4OS is based on Debian, but...

Such images are available for Debian up to version 11 (32-bit support was dropped since Debian 12).
Browse for example https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/archive/11.11.0/ and you'll see a "multi-arch" subdirectory.
But if you browse https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/archive/12.0.0/ and later, you won't see ti anymore.

Since Q4OS 5 Aquarius is based on Debian 12 and Q4OS 6 Andromeda is based on Debian 13, you won't be able to find a corresponding Debian multi-arch iso image. You will be stuck to Debian 11 and Q4OS 4 Gemini which is based on Debian 11. Unfortunately Q4OS 4 near its end of life (updates will cease soon).

To install Q4OS 4 anyway, try to install Debian 11 first from a "muti-arch" iso (see links above), then setup Q4OS on top of it (see https://q4os.org/dqa017.html).

FlexQ4 · 2026-03-13 13:24

I would try it that way:
1) Prepare a Q4OS 4 Live on a USB 2.0 Stick with Universial-USB-Installer selecting "Debian-Distro"
2) Go into UEFI/BIOS:
- turn EVERYTHING you can find to Legacy/Older OS's, any advanced (Intel) Turbo/Mega feature OFF - especially for SATA.
- If possible: set the amount memery for VGA to dynamic, NO fixed amount!
3) Save changes and boot from USB
4) when Q4OS has booted up live: select install:
- When it comes to partitioning: delete ANY partition you can find on the disk
- Choose MBR for Partition style and create a ~20-40 GB ext4 partition (for Q4OS 4) mounted to /
- So you'll have place for further additional installations
Good Luck!

q4osteam · 2026-03-13 13:32

Well, the issue is 32bit EFI Bios. In addition to above we can recommend you to install any version of Debian and Q4OS on top of it as @hchiper suggested https://q4os.org/dqa017.html

new2q4 · 2026-03-13 22:06

Thank you for your help, everyone! I went with hchiper's suggestion, and now the notebook actually works!

Err, no offense to anyone here intended, but since Debian seems to be working generally fine on the notebook, and does what I want it to do, I think I'll stick with regular Debian for now.

q4osteam · 2026-03-13 22:12

Yes, Debian is a perfect choice Don’t forget that Q4OS works just as well and even offers a few additional perks.

Q4OS Forum

#1 2026-03-13 10:09

Install USBs won't install GRUB on old notebook, and Live USBs won't b

#2 2026-03-13 11:30

Re: Install USBs won't install GRUB on old notebook, and Live USBs won't b

#3 2026-03-13 13:24

Re: Install USBs won't install GRUB on old notebook, and Live USBs won't b

#4 2026-03-13 13:32

Re: Install USBs won't install GRUB on old notebook, and Live USBs won't b

#5 2026-03-13 22:06

Re: Install USBs won't install GRUB on old notebook, and Live USBs won't b

#6 2026-03-13 22:12

Re: Install USBs won't install GRUB on old notebook, and Live USBs won't b

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