Bios Troubles Booting Start OS

DIY Community Support
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So after two failed attempts getting a full node up and running with StartOS on a Lenovo Thinkpad X61s, I picked up a slightly newer Lenovo Thinkpad W520 with USB 3 ports (hoping to speed up the Bitcoin Block Sync on an external SSD), but now I’m stuck with a StartOS specific boot loading problem.

When I install Ubuntu on that machine, I can boot into the Ubuntu OS no problem. But trying to install and boot into StartOS fails with “PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable”. I have reset the boot device priorities to the default settings in BIOS, and as I said, installing and booting from a regular ubuntu installation works fine, but for some reason StartOS cannot boot on this machine.

Any tips ?

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Good day Chris,

Sorry to hear about things not going the way you planned with your two Lenove DIY builds. Could you give us a bit more details on your hardware setup for both machines, as many things could be the reason for this when going the route of a DIY build? How much RAM; Storage (SSD?); etc.

For instance, as stated in our ’ DIY Guidelines (x86_64)', if you want to use a Bitcoin stack, you will want 8GB+ of RAM and 1TB+ of storage.

In addition, if you haven’t yet, you can have a look at the forum post called [Known-Good Hardware Master List] Hardware Capable of Running StartOS]([Known-Good Hardware Master List] Hardware Capable of Running StartOS).

It has a list of all hardware that the DIY build has been successfully run on and even thought I do see Lenovo on the list, non of the models you mentioned are on there.

To help save you some time, the ones listed for Lenovo are:

  • 720q Tiny (11-20w power draw)
  • x270
  • Thinkcentre and Thinkcentre Tiny
  • Lenovo Thinkpad:
    • T470
    • T550

It might be worth joining the DIY Community on Telegram as someone may have the same model build out you have → Telegram: Contact @start9_labs

I do hope one of these resources help.

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Thanks OKIN
I’ll be away from home for a while so I cannot check, but the external SSD is 2 TB and I think the ram was 16GB. Will have to double check when I return. The telegram group sounds like a great idea. Thanks.

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@chris did you get anywhere? On a ThinkPad T480 myself and I get the same error.

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I’ve got the same issue on a Lenovo X250. I’ve put an SSD in this machine which ran StartOS fine for weeks in a different computer. I can see the SSD (shows up with manufacturer-, model name and size) in BIOS but when I select it, it just switches back to Boot Manager. I have fiddled with pretty much all boot settings at this point and it still won’t work. I’m not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to PCs but still… This makes no sense…

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Did you try switching from legacy to UEFI boot mode? Just a guess…check if there is any kind of secure boot you might try turning off

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Thank you for your post. I’ve tried just about everything, UEFI, Legacy, Secure Boot off, start from SSD connected via USB… nothing worked.