Installing Fedora 17 using USB pendrives on UEFI system

[toMeloos]

Hi all,

Just got a new ultrabook laptop (Asus Zenbook Prime UX31a) and I want to install Fedora 17 on it while maintaining Windows 7 (for now).

My first attempts at installing it failed after messing with the disk partitions, resulting in the laptop not booting anymore. The installation guide is confusing me and I definitely need some help to get this working!

The laptop has 2 USB ports and no DVD drive. I have written the Fedora 17 DVD to a USB pendrive but it seems that method doesn't support UEFI booting. Tried traditional BIOS booting but the install process crashes. I suspect that's due to the disk being GPT instead of MBR.

Please help me out! How would I be able to do this?!?

p.s. I'm a moderately experienced linux user. Have used and installed Gentoo, Ubuntu and Fedora in the past but all on BIOS-based computers. UEFI is new to me.

[hadrons123]

1.Since you need windows 7 first fix MBR using this.


2. FOr UEFI boot

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/...oot_Media-UEFI

this might help.

Or You can try disabling UEFI boot and boot into BIOS mode if your system supports the feature.

[solo2101]

Are u using the DVD or the live CD?

---------- Post added at 10:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:16 PM ----------

Nevermind u have DVD... I would try the live cd first. You could write it to a USB using liveusb-creator.
https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

[george_toolan]

Is your windows installed in UEFI mode?

Does your HDD have a MBR or GPT partition table? You can check with

fdisk -l

[toMeloos]

Sorry for the late reply!

Tried everything imaginable for the last couple of days and nothing seemed to work. Even borrowed an external DVD drive to use the Windows recovery DVD's...

Unlike the Fedora 17 DVD that kept crashing half way through the installation process, it was the Fedora 17 Live-CD that came to my rescue. Managed to do a full disk installation, which unfortunately means I lost Windows.

Read up on this a lot the last couple of days and much of the problem seems to be that most distro's (Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.) focus on providing CD/DVD install media. You can "write" those to a USB pendrive, but there are issues UEFI-booting them. Once you get it to UEFI-boot it, everything should install just fine.

My laptop fortunately does both UEFI and legacy-BIOS booting, which means everything is now in legacy mode. Does mean I can't install Windows 7 Home Pro properly, as the disk is in MBR mode now in stead of GPT. That dual mode is on it's way out though (future computers will likely be UEFI only), as are disc drives (my ultrabook does not have a DVD drive!)

Conclusion: Red Hat should move away from CD/DVD-based install media images and focus on USB pendrives

[cazo]

I don't know if this will help any (I don't have Windows), but...

Even though my laptop computer is not UEFI-based, I was able to make & install Fedora 17 on my (spare) drive in GPT mode from the LiveUSB (Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso). I first had to reformat my MBR drive in GPT mode & partition it the same way my Fedora 16 drive is - with a "protective MBR". Then I installed choosing the 2nd choice (overwrite existing linux).

[root@aspire ~]# gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.4

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 1250263728 sectors, 596.2 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): CC13FDCF-326F-4FB5-B971-51CAB6870C32
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1250263694
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2669 sectors (1.3 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048            4095   1024.0 KiB  EF02  
   2            4096         1028095   500.0 MiB   0700  
   3         1028096      1250263039   595.7 GiB   0700

Partiton 2 is 'boot' & partition 3 is a crypto_LUKS LVM.

I'm thinking you can partition your drive in a similar way, creating a partition for Windows - since you have to re-install it anyways. I could be wrong though, since I haven't used Windows since W98. Another option would be to install it in a virtual machine (if it will allow that).