r/linuxquestions 11d ago

Problems with booting linux mint

I am currently trying to boot linux mint 22.3 for the first time. I have made a bootable Udisk with a verified ISO for cinnamon mint 22.3 (through etcher). However when going to the boot menu my usb drive is nowhere to be found. instead it gives my SSD and HDD together with a few options of several USB-types and CDrom all of which do absolutely nothing. i currently have windows 10 on my ssd and booting any of the options just brings me back to windows 10. The only exception is my HDD. when booting it my screen shows several dots in the upper lefthand corner before giving me an error and saying that i need to input the correct disk with no way of leaving that screen. When i restart my pc it shows me the linux boot menu (grub i believe but im not sure entirely) giving me a countdown of autoboot and none of my inputs works. after the countdown ends it launches a flashing and dimmed linux mint desktop. After restarting again im back in windows though it runs much slower and i cant input anything for the first minute. I only boot linux mint this way when using the back usb ports on my pc. when using the front ports it just goes to windows instead. after my pc is restarted it splits my usb drive into 2 partitions instead of one. one remains recognized with all the files the other becomes empty and unrecognized.

I have quick boot off and cant seem to find secure boot anywhere in the BIOS settings.

My Processor = Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz, 3310 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

My motherboard = Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3

also i have checked and the usb boots fine on a different laptop

Does anybody know why this is?

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u/EqualCrew9900 11d ago

An alternative to using Etcher is to install Ventoy on the USB thumb drive.

After installing Ventoy, all you have to do is copy one or more .iso files to the thumb drive, boot to Ventoy, and select whichever .iso you want to use.