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

[ragman]

On 6 January 2012 08:51, Xianwen Chen <xianwen.chen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 10:06 AM, Gene Cumm <gene.cumm at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Thank you Gene. The laptop has been set to boot in the order of USB,
> HDD, CDROM, and NIC.
>
>> 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).
>
> Hmm, I googled around and tried the following two methods:
> a) Set the 512 MB as a USB-ZIP by 'mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sda 0 64 32'
> b) Offset as
>    mkdiskimage -F -4 /dev/sdb 1 64 32
>    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1 seek=446 count=64
>    echo -e ',0\n,0\n,0\n,,C,*' | sfdisk /dev/sdb
>    mkdosfs /dev/sdb4
>
> Neither method worked; but it could be that I misspecified something
> in method b), as it was meant for a USB disk which is larger than 8GB
> (http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Bootable_USB_Key) and I simply changed
> the parameters in the first line ('255 63' to '64 32')
>
>> 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.
>
> I was using FAT32; but after reading your email, I thought it would be
> a good idea to try FAT16, since the size of the USB thumbnail is
> small. Unfortunately, it didn't work out.
>
> Another thing which may worth mentioning is that I'm using version
> 4.01 under Linux. Would that affect anything?
>
> x
>

One of my sites has this model which I've not been able to visit until today.

I have syslinux 4.01 on a 8Gb FAT32 verbatim stick which was detected
and booted fine after pressing 'F12' (not F9 as you've stated) to get
a boot menu.

Unfortunatly I don't have any suggestions but wanted to report that
syslinux itself doesn't seem to have a problem on a Latitude E5410.

Cheers
Darryl