linuxwindows-8.1usb-drivebacktrack-linux

backtrack 5 wont boot

First off, sorry for my english, it is not very good.

I have a Toshiba satellite c885d running windows 8.1. I have a lexar 4 gigabyte usb flashdrive. It says on the back: LJDS50-4GB. I used Linuxlive usb creator and backtrack 5 r3 gnome 32 bit. I downloaded the ISO from backtrack-linux.org.

When I put my usb into my computer, hold f12, and power it on, it takes me to the boot menu, where it gives me 4 options to boot from. after each one, there is a little bit of text. except after "usb" is blank. and then at the bottom is two more options, one taking you to the menu that you can also access by pressing f2 durring startup.

If I hit enter when usb is selected, it takes me to a black screen that says two words (something like checking usb, but I forgot. I will put in an edit that will contain a picture and the exact text.) then after 2 seconds, it says failed, and then launches windows. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE help me out. I tried researching a solution to the problem, none of which worked. I have successfully run backtrack from the VM thingy that linuxlive has with all of the usb stuff, and It works fine, but it is really slow, as I have too many windows processes running at the same time. If anyone can diagnose me with a problem, awesome. If you can give me a solution, stupendous.

edit: it says "checking media" and then "failed"

images: boot menue

"failed" screen

Solution

  • Ok, after some discussion in question comments I suspect that the problem is in your install image. If you can't see GRUB menu then you are unable to enter bootloader on your USB drive. It might be several things causing your problem with common denominator - UEFI:

    1. You have written your install image incorrectly and UEFI is not recognizing it.
    2. You have written your install image correctly, but that image is not capable to run on UEFI - see discussion here.

    Anyway 100% way to make Backtrack like most of current Linux distros to work on UEFI is to turn UEFI to legacy mode (BIOS), though you have to unninstall Windows 8 ;-)

    I would not give lot of hopes to that because Backtrack 5 is based on Ubuntu 10.04 which is way too old - earliest Ubuntu supporting UEFI is 12.04.

    I can recommend a few things that might help:

    1. Erase your usb flash drive and write Backtrack image to it again, but with UnetBootIn. There is an official tutorial for that.
    2. Do not try to install Backtrack 5 if don't know what GRUB is. You can install latest Ubuntu that can run on UEFI with SecureBoot (not sure it's easy) and enjoy all of the tools from Backtrack repositories.

    Good Luck and have a lot of fun!