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[Member furicle]

Feeling dumb here, but…

I’ve downloaded the antix 17 full iso on a Windows computer.

All the instructions for installation etc start from AFTER you’ve booted up from that iso.

What’s the correct proceedure to get that iso on a USB stick? I’ve tried Rufus and Yumi and one other and I can’t get a bootable result.

[Anonymous]

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Plugin the pendrive.
Launch rufus.
If rufus asks permission “need to download 2 small files”, answer “Yes”.
Click the [icon of a DVD drive] button in Rufus to browse+select iso file.

Review the input fields.
Device: {if the USB pendrive has not been autoselected, use the selectbox to select it as the target}
Partition Scheme: {choose “MBR …for BIOS or UEFI”}
File system: {FAT32}
Cluster size {trust the preselected default; do not change}
New Volume Label: Rufus populated the field with “antiXlive” when you select the iso file. You’re free to choose a different label.
Check device for bad blocks {suggest leaving this UNchecked}
Quick format {suggest leave CHECKED}
Create a bootable disk using [ISO image] {— you’ve already selected this
Create extended label and icon files {suggest leave CHECKED}
List USB hard drives {leave unchecked}
Add fixes {leave UNchecked, unless you later learn this is needed (rarely so)}

Click rufus [Start] button & await completion (for a usb2 drive, expect 3-6 minutes; for a usb3 drive, expect 2-4 minutes)
Upon completion, click the rufus Exit (or RestartSystem, your choice) button.

[Member fungalnet]

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If and when you have done all this and you still can’t boot you may have a good usb stick with the iso transferred but your bios is sending you back to windows.
One, edit the bios on the sequence of which your machine boots and tell it to try USB first then HD
or
Two, you must find the correct button/sequence to get to a boot option where you can select the device. Many have F12 during bios reading, some like HP have F9, some will give you a message of the correct options during bios-read (F2 to modify bios settings, F12 for selecting boot device, for example).

Once you have a live linux then transferring an iso image to a device is just a simple command, no rufus or usbootin or any of that stuff.

anti-X - Adélie - obarun - systemd Free Space

[Member furicle]

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Thanks for the prompt and very complete reply.
I tried again using the latest version of Rufus (2.18) and your instructions.

After hitting F9 and choosing the USB stick, it just hangs with a blinking underline.

Any other suggestions? I guess I can muck around a bit with -full or -base or try another machine, but this is the one that needs the change.

[Moderator BobC]

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Try it with a different flashdrive, one you know works with that windows on that machine.

I have some machines where the USB ports don’t put out enough power to run the devices, and have to use an AC powered USB hub for those.

[Member furicle]

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Aha!

I tried using using ‘DD’ mode instead of ‘ISO’
Thats working with both -base and -full and gives me something that boots.

Thanks for getting me on the right path.

[Moderator caprea]

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Also prefer the usb2 slots over usb3
Good idea to try if the stick works on a different machine.

Ah, you got it working, cool!

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by caprea.

[Moderator BobC]

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If you keep getting errors trying to boot, Rufus has an option you can select to check for bad blocks or sectors. It takes longer, and to see the results you need to look at the log, but if you have a USB with some bad areas, they won’t boot right.

I found that Linux has a badblocks utility that will check an unmounted drive and write the output to a file that can be fed into the program to make a file system to avoid the bad blocks, so to check /dev/sdc and write the list to a file, from a terminal as root I ran:

badblocks -s -o usb-xxx-badblocks.lst /dev/sdc

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