[syslinux] FW: Boot Error" on random machines

[Jack Peirce]

So I recently developed a collection of bash scripts to run QC programs on the computer my company sells to customers before they ship out. Originally they would run off live cds, but we just made the switch to Live USB sticks for more automation and the benefits of persistence. Right now each of these sticks has syslinux 3.71 installed, and boots up into a custom debian system to auto-run the qc scripts.

For the most part, these sticks boot on almost all machines. Occasionally, we will get a machine that will just say "Boot Error" and doesn't give a syslinux version, or menu or anything. I've read that this might be caused by faulty bios, and that a possible work around is making e usb stick's disk geometry to be that of a USB-ZIP drive. This however, loses persistence which is absolutely necessary for our system.

At first, I thought it was just some intel mobos that don't seem to boot, but recently came across a supermicro mobo that wouldn't boot either.

Does anyone have any ideas? And would it help the devs if I posted up motherboards/bios versions that do not work with the newest version of syslinux? We're a small shop, but ship out a decent number of machines daily, so I suspect there will be many mobos that don't work with syslinux coming through.

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