Can't boot in UEFI mode from USB flash drive on XPS 13 (on USB 3.0 ports)

[Adrian Patrascu]

Problem:

When I try to use a USB flash drive to boot up my new XPS 13 (L322x, 1080p version) the device is not recognized and the computer is re-directed to the ubuntu bootloader (on the internal disk). After doing some research, it seems this only happens on USB 3.0 ports. Unfortunately, this laptop only has USB 3.0 ports. The only workaround at this point is to use Legacy mode instead of the UEFI mode.

Additional Note:

I have tried multiple proposed 'fixes' a history of which is documented here: http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/4613/t/19501016.aspx

[Andreas Eriksson (andreas-d-eriksson)]

You can install in legacy mode and add the EFI-partition etc. The Ubuntu installer or maybe GRUB will ad an entry to the EFI BIOS. Activate EFI boot mode again and choose to boot the new entry. But you are right, this is a problem.

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn (dennisml)]

In case somebody struggles with this do the following:

1. Disable Intel Rapid Start in the BIOS
2. Disable Intel Smart Connect in the BIOS
3. DIsable Secure Boot in the BIOS
4. Add a boot option like this:
a) enter any name
b) select the disk entry representing the USB device
c) this is where it gets interesting. On my first tries I entered "/efi/boot/bootx64.efi" and couldn't get it to work. What I then did I entered this again, then tabbed several times until the boot file field was seleced again and hit <enter>. Suddenly I a file selector popped up that I couldn't get to before. There I selected the file. What ended up in the field was this "efi/boot/bootx64.efi". Notice the missing leading "/". After that I rebooted, selected the new usb entry and my (Fedora 18) boot menu from the usb stick came up.

Maybe it was just the leading "/" that was the problem but I wanted to describe accurately what I did to get the system to boot from USB in UEFI mode.

[Todd Parkin (todd-parkin)]

I just went through this process and was able to add a UEFI Boot option to boot from USB without doing most of the steps above. Intel SpeedStep and Intel Smart Connect are both enabled. Secure Boot is disabled (it was by default) and then I added a boot option with these steps:

1. I set Boot Option Name to be "USB Boot" (though it can be anything)
2. I tabbed past File System List, since there was only one option, it was USB, and it was already selected
3. I left File Name blank and hit enter to get the file selection prompt. I am booting a WinPE 4.0 boot image, so I chose this path: "EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi".
4. I tabbed to select [Yes] and hit Enter

I was able to boot my USB key under the UEFI section of the boot manager and get our corporate Windows 8 image installed. This leads me to believe that the XPS 13 BIOS/UEFI is not the culprit for booting to USB with UEFI.

[Adrian [e-mail] (adrian-aichner)]

After creating a ubuntu 15.04 USB startup disk (same for Startup Disk Creator and UNetbootin) I can boot exactly once from it in UEFI mode.
After that I can neither boot from USB nor internal SSD.
To get SSD boot to work again I have to add a UEFI boot opton pointing to
\EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi

Running fsck on the no longer booting USB stick I get this and can repair it with the -a option (shown below).

After that I am back to the beginning of this comment, USB boot into "Try Ubuntu" works once.

adrian@adrian-xps-13-9343:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sdb
[sudo] password for adrian:
fsck from util-linux 2.25.2
fsck.fat 3.0.27 (2014-11-12)
0x41: Dirty bit is set. Fs was not properly unmounted and some data may be corrupt.
1) Remove dirty bit
2) No action
? 2
There are differences between boot sector and its backup.
This is mostly harmless. Differences: (offset:original/backup)
  65:01/00
1) Copy original to backup
2) Copy backup to original
3) No action
? 3
/dev/sdb: 518 files, 144205/1952917 clusters
adrian@adrian-xps-13-9343:~$ sudo fsck -a /dev/sdb
fsck from util-linux 2.25.2
fsck.fat 3.0.27 (2014-11-12)
0x41: Dirty bit is set. Fs was not properly unmounted and some data may be corrupt.
 Automatically removing dirty bit.
Performing changes.
/dev/sdb: 518 files, 144205/1952917 clusters
adrian@adrian-xps-13-9343:~$

[Jared Dominguez (jared-dominguez)]

Please use dd to copy the installer to the USB stick and report on whether you still see this issue. Using dd works for me 100% of the time on the platforms mentioned, so this sounds like a USB Creator issue.

[Leo (l2-ubuntu)]

I can confirm the same issues as Adrian, with a slightly different use case.

I have Kubuntu 15.04 installed on a USB3 stick (full os, not a livecd). When the BIOS is set to DISABLE USB3 mode I can boot from this fine as per the UEFI entry. UEFI loads the efi copy of Grub, and grub search_fs finds the USB stick partition's uuid and chainloads usb grub further.

However when the BIOS is set to USB3 mode, the stick can only be booted from this entry once. Future attempts to boot the stick result in UEFI loading local EFI grub, however grubs search_fs then fails to find the USB3 stick.

Similarly, USB3 install media, such as the Kubuntu installer, do not appear on the UEFI boot selection screen after this point either.

Booting into Windows from the SSD, loading up vmware with boot-repair-disk with the USB stick passed through, and then performing a repair of the bootloader on the stick... will allow the USB stick to boot precisely one more time. On next restart however it will be back to efi grub failing to find the stick. I can repeat the repair to load as many times as needed.

At this point, my suspicion is the BIOS has problems with USB3 devices.

[kannan (rkannan)]

I think I have a similar problem with the Dell Precision 5520 with bios version 1.0.2. I bought it with Ubuntu and would like to repartition it. I have spent nearly a day trying to boot from a UEFI USB Boot disk. I tried disabling UEFI boot and this also does not work. Googling around I came up on this launchpad bug. For more irony, the link above in the "Bug Description" goes to dell community website which asks for an account -- it does not take my dell account. I try to create a new one which fails (probably some web app bug). I call customer service and they say that they only support hardware issues and software issues require me to pay extra. Beyond frustrated in just two days with the "developer edition laptop" that cost $3000.

[Emmie (ee-mm)]

I have exact same issue as kannan. Lenovo and Dell both make it impossible to install any Legacy ROMs. I started with a Lenovo Thinkpad 440 and could only get Ubuntu 16.04 installed under UEFI after 8 hours of trying to get Backbox Linux on there, which is based on Ubuntu but doesn't have the Microsoft extortion certificate on it (has to be installed Legacy). So instead, I got a Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, brand new, with Ubuntu pre-installed and I STILL can't get Backbox on it. I did a BIOS wipe which managed to kill the obnoxious Dell OS Recovery Agent, turned off almost everything in my BIOS, and still get an UEFI error at the end of the Backbox installation saying it couldn't be installed into /target/. I even tried to reformat the drive with Acronis Disk Director and the Acronis bootable could only see itself in the tool, not even the drives on the machine.

I think the last issue may be a AHCI/RAID thing, but everything I've read about it seems to say disable the RAID option in the BIOS and do AHCI, but mine was already set like that.

It's just not fair that we spend all this money on a machine that we can't use how we wish. Even Ubuntu allows this chicanery to continue. My distro carries an Ubuntu 14.04 base - why is it this hard to install?!