If I remove the hard drive from the system, rather than just change the BIOS boot order so USB is tried first, The USB device boots successfully.
I suspect my issue is more accurately related to bug #277903 "Missing Operating System [message at boot]". This messages is written by the syslinux MBR code when it can't find the second stage code in the bootable file-system. In the process of investigating this issue I discovered this boot-device issue which suggests a BIOS bug. The affected Sony Vaio has a Phoenix BIOS. It suggests that when the syslinux MBR (Master Boot Record) code asks the BIOS to read the first sector from the bootable partition (the file- system's boot-loader code) one of two things might be happening: 1. BIOS passes the wrong drive number to the boot-loader as part of the PnP header (available in DL when execution is passed to the MBR from BIOS along with the PnP header at ES:DI) 2. BIOS ignores the drive number passed (in DL) to int 0x13 (Read sector) -- USB startup thumb drive fails to boot https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/293083 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
