[syslinux] Dell Latitude E5410 doesn't boot my USB thumbnail

[Gene Cumm]

On Jan 5, 2012 1:57 AM, "Xianwen Chen" <xianwen.chen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi there,
>
> I have a 512MB USB thumbnail which I used syslinux to create a bootable
USB disk. It works fine with my old laptop and a few other computers.
However, on my Dell Latitude E5410, it doesn't really work; when the Dell
laptop boots, I pressed F9 to see the boot devices list and the thumbnail
is not on the list.
>
> Some hints please?

These systems detect attribute and test certain things before showing you
the drive as a choice.  My observation is that this helps end users that
just leave a USB drive plugged in and the boot sequence is set to boot USB
automatically before internal HDD by their administrator.

1) partitioning.  I had issues with other OptiPlex/Latitude models in the
same time frame when I attempted custom geometry.  I'm uncertain on
alignment (ie 1 MiB alignment rather than cylinder).

2) filesystem.  I haven't attempted anything but FAT16/FAT32.  You might be
able to fake it by filling in the "fields" of FAT16 if for example you're
using ext3.

--
-Gene